IRLF 


B    M    IDE 


? 


PENGUIN  PERSONS 
PEPPERMINTS 


PENGUIN  PERSONS 
PEPPERMINTS 


BY 

WALTER  PRICHARD  EATON 

AUTHOR  OF 

green  Trails  &  Upland  ^Pastures,  flays  &  flayers, 
The  Idyl  of  TW/z  Fires,  &c. 


W.  A.  WILDE  COMPANY 

BOSTON         -        -         CHICAGO 


Copyrighted  1922 

By  W.  A.  WILDE  COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved 

Penguin  Persons  and  Peppermints 

22 


J^ittle  Sister 

who  'was  born  just  in  time 

to  know  the  old,  quiet  ways  of  life 

in  their  gentle  decline — to 

know  and  to  love 

them 


Contents 

"Page 

Author's  Foreword ix 

Penguin  Persons I 

Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  Dick 18 

The  Passing  of  the  Stage  Sundial 33 

On  Singing  Songs  with  One  Finger       ....  41 

The  Immorality  of  Shop-windows 46 

A  Forgotten  American  Poet 51 

New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line     ....  65 

The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth 77 

The  Bad  Manners  of  Polite  People 87 

On  Giving  Up  Golf  Forever 96 

"Grape-Vine"  Erudition 108 

Business  Before  Grammar 114 

Wood  Ashes  and  Progress 1 1 8 

The  Vacant  Room  in  Drama 128 

On  Giving  an  Author  a  Plot 132 

The  Twilight  Veil 136 

Spring  in  the  Garden 154 

The  Bubble,  Reputation .     .168 

The  Old  House  on  the  Bend 180 

Concerning  Hat-trees 184 

The  Shrinking  of  Kingman's  Field 189 

Mumblety-peg  and  Middle  Age 211 

Barber  Shops  of  Yesterday 229 

The  Button  Box 234 

Peppermints 239 


^Author  s  Foreword 

IT  is  not  a  little  unfortunate  that  no  one  can 
attempt  the  essay  form  nowadays,  more  especially 
that  type  of  essay  which  is  personal,  reminiscent, 
"an  open  letter  to  whom  it  may  concern,"  with 
out  being  accused  of  trying  to  write  like  Charles 
Lamb.  Of  course,  if  we  were  ever  accused  of 
succeeding,  that  would  be  another  story!  There 
is,  to  be  sure,  no  doubt  that  the  gentle  Elia  im 
pressed  his  form  and  method  on  all  English  writers 
who  followed  him,  and  still  reaches  out  across 
a  century  to  threaten  with  his  high  standards 
those  who  still  venture  into  this  pleasant  and 
now  so  neglected  field.  Such  are  the  rigors  of 
triumphant  gentleness.  Still — and  he  would  have 
been  the  first  to  recognize  the  fact — it  is  rather 
unfair  to  demand  of  every  essayist  the  revelation 
of  a  personality  like  Lamb's.  Fundamentally,  all 
literature,  even  naturalistic  drama,  is  the  reve 
lation  of  a  personality,  a  point  of  view.  But  it 
is  the  peculiar  flavor  of  the  essay  that  it  reveals 


x  Author's  Foreword 

an  author  through  his  chat  about  himself,  his 
friends,  his  memories  and  fancies,  in  something 
of  the  direct  manner  of  a  conversation  or  a  letter; 
and  he  himself  feels,  in  writing,  a  delightful 
sense  of  intimacy  with  his  future  readers.  That 
Lamb  was  a  master  of  this  art  like  no  other, 
without  a  visible  or  probable  rival,  hardly  con 
stitutes  a  reason  for  denying  to  less  delightful 
men  and  gifted  artists  the  right  also  to  practice 
it,  to  put  themselves  and  their  intimate  little 
affairs  and  idiosyncrasies  into  direft  and  personal 
touch  with  such  few  readers  as  they  may  find. 
For  the  readers  of  his  essays  are  the  author's 
friends  in  a  sense  that  the  readers  of  his  novels 
or  dissertations,  or  the  witnesses  of  his  plays, 
can  never  be.  There  will  be  no  story  to  hold 
them,  no  fictional,  independent  characters,  no 
ideas  nor  arguments  on  high  questions  of  policy. 
There  will  be  only  a  joint  interest  in  the  mi 
nutiae  of  life.  If  I  like  cats  and  snowstorms,  and 
you  like  cats  and  snowstorms,  we  are  likely  to 
come  together  on  that  mutual  ground,  and  clasp 
shadow  hands  across  the  page.  But  if  you  do 
not  like  cats  and  snowstorms,  why  then  you 
will  not  like  me,  and  we  needn't  bore  each 
other,  need  we? 


^Author *s  Foreword  xi 

The  little  papers  in  this  volume,  issued  from 
the  peaceful  town  of  Sewanee  atop  the  Cumber 
land  plateau,  between  Thumping  Dick  Hollow 
and  Little  Fiery  Gizzard  Creek,  have  been  written 
at  various  times  and  places  in  the  past  fifteen 
years,  many  of  them  while  I  still  dwelt  in  New 
York,  and  babbled  o'  green  fields,  many  before, 
and  some  few  after,  the  outbreak  of  the  Great 
War.  That  War,  you  will  perhaps  discorer,  finds 
in  them  no  reflection.  It  has  been  consciously 
excluded,  for  though  the  world  can  never  be 
the  same  world  again,  as  we  are  in  no  danger 
of  forgetting,  there  are  some  things  which  even 
war  and  revolution  cannot  change,  such  as  the 
memories  of  our  childhood,  the  joy  of  violets 
in  the  Spring,  the  delight  in  melody,  the  hu 
mor  of  small  dogs,  the  coo  of  babies.  I  have 
fancied  we  are  sometimes  by  way  of  forgetting 
that.  At  any  rate,  of  such  matters,  in  hours  when 
he  has  no  thought  but  to  please  himself,  the  essay 
ist  chats,  and  shall  chat  in  the  happy  years  that  are 
to  come  again,  or  all  our  bloodshed  has  been  in 
vain.  If,  at  the  same  time,  he  chances  to  please 
an  editor  also,  and  then  to  make  a  few  friends  who 
like  what  he  likes,  smiles  sympathetically  at  what 
makes  him  smile,  why,  that  is  clear  again! 


xii  ^Author's  Foreword 

This  author  has  been  fortunate  enough  to 
please  several  editors  in  the  past,  and  to  all  of 
them,  who  have  given  him  permission  to  reprint 
such  papers  in  this  volume  as  have  appeared  in 
their  periodicals,  he  extends  his  gratitude.  They 
are  specifically,  the  editors  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly, 
Scribners,  House  and  Garden,  The  Dial,  Ainslee's, 
The  Scrap  Book,  The  Boston  Transcript  and  The 
New  York  Tribune. 

W.  P.  E. 

Twin  Fires, 

Sheffield, 

Mass. 


'Penguin  Persons 

AFTER  all,  one  knows  so  little  about  a  man  from 
his  printed  works!  They  are  the  gleanings  of 
his  thoughts  and  investigations,  the  pick  of  his 
mind  and  heart;  and  they  are  at  best  but  an 
impersonal  and  partial  record  of  the  writer. 
Even  autobiography  has  something  unsatisfac 
tory  about  it;  one  feels  the  narrator  is  on  guard 
always,  as  it  were,  and,  aware  of  an  audience 
cold  and  of  strangers,  keeps  this  back  and  trims 
up  that  to  make  himself  more  what  he  should 
be  (or,  in  some  perverse  cases,  what  he  should 
not  be).  But  probably  no  man  who  is  worthy 
of  attention  sits  down  to  write  a  letter  to  a 
good  friend  with  one  eye  on  posterity  and  the 
public.  In  his  intimate  correspondence  he  is 
off  guard.  Hence,  some  day,  when  he  has 
died,  the  world  comes  to  know  him  by  fleet 
ing  glimpses  as  he  was, — which  is  almost  as 
near,  is  it  not,  as  we  ever  get  to  knowing  one 
another? — knows  him  under  his  little  private 
moods,  in  the  spell  of  his  personal  joys  and  sor 
rows,  sees  his  flashes  of  unexpected  humor, — 


!%*:'<; n g u i n  'Persons 


eve.a,-  ;it;  -liiay!  be,- ,  his    unexpected    pettinesses 
Thus  dangerous  and  thus  delightful  is  it  to  pub 
lish  a  great  man's  letters. 

Such  letters  were  Ruskin's  to  Charles  Eliot 
Norton,  which  Professor  Norton  has  given  to 
the  world.  No  one  can  fail  from  those  letters 
to  get  a  more  intimate  picture  of  the  author  of 
Modern  Painters  than  could  ever  be  imagined 
out  of  that  work  itself,  and  out  of  the  rest  of 
his  works  besides,  not  excepting  the  wonderful 
Fors  C/avigera;  and  not  only  a  more  intimate, 
but  a  different  picture,  touched  with  greater 
whimsicality,  and  with  infinite  sadness,  too. 
Not  his  hard-wrung  thoughts  and  theories,  but 
his  moods  of  the  moment — and  he  was  a  man 
rich  in  the  moods  of  the  moment — tell  most 
prominently  here.  And  with  how  many  of 
these  moods  can  the  Ordinary  Reader  sympa 
thize!  Again  and  again  as  the  Ordinary  Reader 
turns  the  pages  he  finds  the  great  man  under 
the  thralldom  of  the  same  insect  cares  and 
annoyances  which  rule  us  all,  until  he  real 
izes  as  perhaps  never  before  that  poet  and 
peasant,  genius  and  scribe,  are  indeed  one  in 
a  common  humanity,  and  sighs,  with  a  lurk 
ing  smile  of  satisfaction,  "So  nigh  is  grandeur 
to  our  dust!" 

One  of  the  points  of  convergence  between 
Ruskin  and  the  Ordinary  Reader  which  has  ap 
pealed  to  me  with  peculiar  force  occurs  in  a 


'Penguin  'Persons  3 

letter  from  London  dated  in  1860.  "When  I 
begin  to  think  at  all,"  Ruskin  writes,  "I  get 
into  states  of  disgust  and  fury  at  the  way  the 
mob  is  going  on  (meaning  by  the  mob,  chiefly 
Dukes,  crown-princes,  and  such  like  persons) 
that  I  choke;  and  have  to  go  to  the  British 
Museum  and  look  at  Penguins  till  I  get  cool. 
I  find  Penguins  at  present  the  only  comfort  in 
life.  One  feels  everything  in  the  world  so 
sympathetically  ridiculous;  one  can't  be  angry 
when  one  looks  at  a  Penguin." 

Why,  of  course  one  can't!  It  is  absurdly  true, 
when  one  comes  to  think  of  it,  this  beneficent 
influence  of  penguins,  stuffed  penguins,  at  that, 
which  cannot  even  waddle.  I  dare  say  few 
readers  ever  thought  of  this  peculiar  bird  (if  it 
is  a  bird)  in  just  that  light  before  Mr.  Ruskin's 
letter  came  to  view;  I'm  sure  I  never  did.  But 
few  readers  will  fail  to  recall  at  a  first  reading 
of  the  words  that  piclure  of  a  penguin  which 
used  to  adorn  the  school  geographies,  and  pres 
ently  will  come  to  them  the  old  sensation  of 
amusement  at  the  waddly  fellow  propped  up  on 
his  impossible  feet,  the  smile  will  break  over 
their  lips,  and  they  will  be  one  in  mood  with 
Mr.  Ruskin.  They  may  affirm  that  of  course 
the  author  was  only  indulging  in  a  little  whim 
sicality,  and  they  may  two  thirds  believe  it,  as 
it  is  no  doubt  two  thirds  true;  but  just  the 
same,  unless  I  am  much  mistaken,  the  image  of 


4  'Penguin  "Persons 

a  penguin  will  persist  in  their  minds,  as  it  per 
sisted  in  Raskin's  mind — else  how  did  he  come 
to  write  of  it  in  this  letter? — and  they  will  be 
the  better  and  the  happier  for  the  smile  it 
evokes,  as  Ruskin  was  the  better  and  the 
happier.  Indeed,  that  letter  was  his  cheeriest 
for  months. 

For  me,  however,  the  image  has  not  faded 
with  the  passing  of  the  mood,  or  rather  it  has 
changed  into  something  more  abiding.  It  has 
assumed,  in  fact,  no  less  a  guise  than  the  human ; 
it  has  become  converted  into  certain  of  my 
friends.  I  now  know  these  friends,  in  my 
thoughts  of  them,  as  Penguin  Persons.  I  find 
they  have  the  same  beneficent  effedt  on  me,  and 
on  others  around  them,  as  the  penguins  on 
Ruskin.  I  mean  here  to  sing  their  praises,  for 
I  believe  that  they  and  their  kind  (since  every 
one  enters  on  his  list  of  friends,  as  I  do,  some 
Penguin  Persons)  have,  even  if  they  do  not 
know  it,  a  mission  in  the  world,  an  honorable 
destiny  to  fulfill.  They  prevent  us  from  taking 
life  too  seriously;  they  make  everything  "sym 
pathetically  ridiculous";  they  are  often  "as  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land." 

But,  at  the  very  outset,  I  would  not  be  mis 
understood.  I  do  not  mean  that  a  Penguin 
Person  must  resemble  the  amusing  bird  in 
physical  aspect.  There  are,  I  know,  certain 
people,  a  far  more  numerous  class  than  is 


'Penguin  'Persons  5 

generally  supposed,  who  see  in  almost  everybody 
a  resemblance  to  some  animal,  bird,  or  fish.  I 
am  one  of  these  people  myself.  It  is  on  record 
as  far  back  as  the  fourth  generation  that  some 
one  of  my  successive  ancestors  had  the  same 
unhappy  faculty,  for  it  is  unhappy,  since  it  im 
poses  on  the  person  who  resembles  for  us  a  pig, 
in  our  thoughts  of  him,  the  attributes  of  that 
beast,  and  so  on  through  the  natural  history 
catalogue.  It  is  not  pleasant  to  watch  a  puma 
kitten  sitting  beside  you  in  the  opera  house, 
especially  when  your  mere  brain  tells  you  she  is 
probably  a  sweet,  even-tempered  little  matron, 
or  to  wait  in  pained  expectancy  for  your  large- 
eared  minister  to  bray,  even  though  you  know 
he  will  not  depart  from  his  measured  exposition 
of  sound  and  sane  doclrine.  However,  the  Pen 
guin  Persons  are  such  by  virtue  of  their  moral 
and  mental  attributes  solely,  of  the  similar  effect 
they  produce  on  those  about  them  by  their 
personalities.  I  have  never  met  a  man  yet  who 
physically  resembled  a  penguin,  though  I  fancy 
the  experience  would  be  interesting. 

Still  less  would  I  have  it  understood  that 
Penguin  Persons  are  stupid.  Far  from  it.  Dr. 
Crothers  declares,  in  his  Gentle  Reader,  that  he 
would  not  like  to  be  neighbor  to  a  wit.  "It 
would  be  like  being  in  proximity  to  a  live 
wire,"  he  says.  "A  certain  insulating  film  of 
kindly  stupidity  is  needed  to  give  a  margin  of 


6  'Penguin  'Persons 

safety  to  human  intercourse."  I  do  not. think 
that  Dr.  Crothers  could  have  known  a  Penguin 
Person  when  he  wrote  that.  The  Penguin  Per 
son  is  not  a  wit,  there  is  no  barb  to  his  shafts  of 
fun,  no  uneasiness  from  his  preternatural  clever 
ness,  for  he  is  not  preternaturally  clever.  You 
never  feel  unable  to  cope  with  him,  you  never 
feel  your  mind  keyed  to  an  unusual  alertness  to 
follow  him;  you  feel,  indeed,  a  sense  of  com 
forting  superiority,  for,  after  all,  you  do  take  the 
world  so  much  more  seriously  than  he!  And 
yet  he  is  not  stupid;  he  is  bright,  alert, 
"kindly,"  to  be  sure,  but  delightfully  humorous, 
deliciously  droll.  Life  with  him  appears  to  be 
one  huge  joke,  and  there  is  an  undion  about 
him,  a  contagion  in  his  point  of  view,  that 
affedts  you  whether  you  will  or  no,  and  when 
you  are  in  his  presence  you  cannot  take  life 
seriously,  either, — you  can  but  laugh  with  him. 
He  does  you  good.  You  say  he  is  " perfectly 
ridiculous,"  but  you  laugh.  Then  he  smiles 
back  at  you  and  cracks  another  of  those  absurd 
remarks  of  his,  and  you  know  he  is  "sympa 
thetically  ridiculous."  Perhaps  you  were  out 
of  sorts  with  life  when  you  met  him,  but  one 
cannot  be  angry  when  one  looks  at  a  Penguin 
Person. 

But  do  you  say  that  the  original  bird  is  not 
like  that  at  all,  that  he  is  the  most  stupid  of 
fellows?  Ah!  then  you  have  never  seen  a  pen- 


'Penguin  Persons  7 

guin  swim!  He  is  grace  and  beauty  and  skill 
in  the  water.  If  it  were  only  his  stupidity  that 
made  us  smile,  not  he,  but  the  hen,  would  be 
the  most  amusing  of  God's  creatures.  It  is 
something  more  subtle,  more  personal,  than 
that.  It  can  only  be  described  as  Penguinity. 

Penguinity!  The  word  is  not  in  the  diction 
aries;  it  is  beyond  the  pale  of  the  "purists";  in 
coining  it  I  am  fully  aware  that  I  violate  the 
canons  of  the  Harvard  English  Department, 
that  I  fly  in  the  face  of  philology,  waving  a  red 
rag.  Yet  I  do  it  gladly,  assertively,  for  I  have 
confidence  that  some  day,  when  Penguin  Per 
sons  have  taken  their  rightful  place  in  the 
world's  estimation,  the  world  will  not  be  able 
to  dispense  with  my  little  word,  which  will 
then  overthrow  the  dictionary  despotism  and 
enter  unchallenged  the  leather  strongholds  of 
Webster  and  Murray. 

Yet  before  that  day  does  come,  and  to  hasten 
its  coming,  I  would  record  a  tribute  to  my 
first  and  firmest  Penguin  friend, — my  friend 
and  the  friend  of  how  many  others? — long  and 
lank  of  limb,  thin  and  high-boned  of  face,  alert, 
smiling,  ridiculous.  On  the  nights  when  steam 
ships  were  sunk  in  the  East  River,  or  incipient 
subways  elevated  suddenly  above  ground,  or 
other  exciting  features  of  New  York  life  came 
clamoring  for  publicity,  he  would  sit  calm  and 
smiling,  coatless,  a  corncob  pipe  between  his 


8  "Penguin  "Persons 

teeth,  and  read  "copy"  with  the  speed  of  two 
ordinary  men.  The  excited  night  city  editor 
would  rush  about,  shouting  orders  and  counter 
manding  them;  reporters  would  dash  in  and 
out;  telegraph  instruments  would  buzz;  the 
nerve-wracking  whistle  of  the  tube  from  the 
composing  room  would  shrill  at  sudden  inter 
vals,  causing  everybody  to  start  involuntarily 
each  time  and  to  curse  with  vexation  and  anger; 
the  irritable  night  editor,  worried  lest  he  miss 
the  outgoing  trains  with  his  first  edition,  would 
look  furtively  at  the  clock  at  three-minute 
periods  and  plunge  his  grimy  hand  over  his 
sweating  forehead;  but  the  Penguin  Person 
would  sit  smiling  at  his  place  by  the  "copy" 
desk,  blue  pencil  in  hand,  serene  amid  the 
Babel.  And  when  the  tension  was  greatest,  the 
strain  nerve-breaking  to  get  the  big  story,  in  all 
its  complete  and  coherent  details,  into  the 
hungry  presses  that  seemed  almost  visible, 
though  they  waited  the  stroke  of  one,  ten 
stories  down,  in  the  sub-basement,  the  Pen 
guin  Person  would  sit  back  in  his  chair,  grin 
amiably,  and  say  with  a  drawl,  "Hell,  ain't 
it,  fellers?  D*  you  know  what  I'm  going  to 
do  to-morrow,  though?  I'm  going  to  put 
on  my  asbestos  collar,  side  track  some  beaut, 
take  her  to  the  theatre,  and  after  the  show, 
thanks  to  the  princely  salary  I'm  paid  for 
keeping  split  infinitives  out  of  this  sheet,  I'm 


'Penguin  "Persons  9 

going  to  rush  her  round  to  Sherry's  or  Del- 
monico's  and  blow  her  to  a  glass  of  beer  and 
a  frankfurter." 

Then  as  if  by  magic  the  drawn  faces  of  all 
his  associates  would  clear,  the  night  editor 
would  laugh  and  forget  to  look  at  the  clock, 
we  would  resume  our  toil,  momentarily  forget 
ful  of  the  high  pressure  under  which  we  la 
bored,  and  working  the  better  for  the  forget- 
fulness;  and  the  Penguin  Person,  the  smile  still 
expanding  his  mouth,  would  tilt  down  his  chair 
and  work  with  us,  only  faster.  If  he  had  serious 
thoughts,  he  never  disclosed  them  to  us — 
seriously.  When  he  opened  his  lips  we  waited 
always  in  the  expectation  of  some  ridiculous 
remark,  even  though  it  should  clothe  a  platitude 
or  a  piece  of  good,  common-sense  advice.  And 
we  were  never  disappointed.  Life  with  him  was 
apparently  one  huge  joke,  and  it  came  about 
that  when  we  thought  of  him  or  spoke  of  him 
among  ourselves,  it  was  always  with  a  smile. 
Yet  now  he  is  gone — and  what  a  hole!  Other 
men  can  do  his  work  as  well,  if  not  as  quickly. 
The  paper  still  goes  to  press  and  the  public  sees 
no  change;  but  we,  who  worked  beside  him, 
see  it  nightly.  By  twelve  o'clock  on  a  busy 
night,  nervous,  drawn  faces  surround  the  central 
desk,  and  profanity  is  snapped  crossly  back  and 
forth.  There  is  no  alleviation  of  cheerful  in 
anity.  Presently  somebody  looks  up,  remarking, 


io  ^Penguin  Persons 

"I  wish  Bobbie  Barton  was  back."  And  some 
body  else  replies  with  profane  asperity  and  lax 
grammar,  "I  wish  he  was!"  Bobbie,  mean 
while  has  become  a  lawyer,  and  can  now  af 
ford  a  whole  plate  of  frankfurters  at  Delmon- 
ico's.  But  we  are  the  poorer,  and,  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  declare,  the  worse  men  for  the  loss 
of  his  Penguinity. 

Then  there  is  David.  David  is  penguinacious 
by  fits  and  starts,  not  wholly  to  be  depended 
on,  sometimes  needing  himself  to  be  cheered 
with  the  Penguinity  of  others,  but,  when  the 
mood  is  on  him,  softly,  fantastically  ridiculous, 
like  the  nonsense  verse  of  Lewis  Carroll,  a  sort 
of  Alice  in  Wonderland  person.  I  should  not  hes 
itate  to  recommend  him  to  Dr.  Crothers  as  a 
neighbor;  indeed  I  suspecl:  the  good  doctor  is 
almost  such  a  man  himself, —  too  gentle,  too 
fantastic  in  humor  to  suggest,  however  remotely, 
a  "live  wire,"  and  yet  how  far  from  being  stu 
pid!  David's  mind  works  so  unexpectedly.  You 
are  quite  sure  you  know  what  he  is  going  to  say, 
and  yet  he  never  says  it,  giving  his  remark  a 
verbal  twist  which  calls  up  some  absurdly  im 
possible  picture,  and  evokes,  not  a  laugh,  but  a 
deep,  satisfying  smile.  There  is  something  quaint 
and  refreshing  about  such  a  mind  as  David's.  It 
does  not  so  much  restore  one's  animal  spirits,  or 
one's  good  nature,  as  it  rejuvenates  the  springs  of 
fancy,  brings  back  the  whimsical  imagination  of 


'Penguin  'Persons  n 

childhood.  David  will  people  a  room  with  his 
airy  conceits,  as  Mr.  Barrie  peopled  Kensington 
Gardens  with  Peter  Pan  and  his  crew;  and  it  is 
as  impossible  not  to  forget  anger  and  care,  not  to 
feel  sweeter  and  fresher,  for  David's  jests,  as  for 
The  Little  White  Bird.  Only  a  Penguinity  like 
David's  is  subtle,  a  little  unworldly,  and,  like 
most  gracious  gifts,  fragile.  There  are  days  when 
the  world  is  too  much  for  David,  when  his  jests 
are  silent  and  his  conceits  do  not  assemble.  Then 
it  is  that  he  in  turn  needs  the  good  cheer  of  an 
other's  Penguinity,  and  it  is  then  my  happy 
privilege  to  reward  him  by  hunting  up  Bobbie 
Barton,  if  I  can,  and  joining  them  at  a  dinner 
party.  Bobbie's  Penguinity  is  based  on  an  inex 
haustible  fount  of  animal  spirits,  he  is  never  any 
thing  but  a  Penguin.  He  usually  has  David  put 
to  rights  by  the  roast. 

The  other  day,  while  Bobbie  was  running  on 
in  his  ridiculous  fashion,  in  an  idiom  all  his  own 
that  even  Mr.  Ade  could  not  hope  to  rival,  tell 
ing,  I  believe,  about  some  escapade  of  his  at 
Asbury  Park,  where  he  had  "put  the  police 
force  of  two  men  and  three  niggers  out  of  busi 
ness"  by  asking  the  innocent  and  unsuspecting 
chief  the  difference  between  a  man  who  had 
seen  Niagara  Falls,  and  one  who  hadn't,  and  a 
ham  sandwich,  I  fell  to  musing  on  Ruskin's  un 
happy  lot,  who  did  not  know  Bobbie,  nor  appar 
ently  anybody  like  him.  Poor  Ruskin!  After 


12  'Penguin  'Persons 

all,  there  is  more  pathos  than  humor  in  his 
periodic  visits  to  the  penguins.  Isolated,  from 
childhood,  by  parental  care,  from  the  common 
friendships  and  associations  of  life,  still  further 
isolated  in  mature  years  by  his  own  genius  and 
early  and  lasting  intellectual  eminence,  the  won 
der  is  that  he  was  not  more  unhappy,  rather 
than  less.  He  had  few  friends,  and  those  few,  like 
Professor  Norton,  were  intellectual  companions 
as  well,  always  ready  and  eager  to  debate  with 
him  the  problems  of  Art  and  Life  which  were 
forever  vexing  him.  Their  companionship  must 
often  have  been  a  stimulant — when  he  needed, 
perhaps,  a  narcotic.  Their  intercourse  drove  him 
continually  in  upon  himself,  where  there 
was  only  seething  unrest,  when  he  needed  so 
often  to  be  taken  completely  out  of  himself, 
where  there  was  peace.  And,  in  his  hours  of 
need,  he  turned  to  the  Alps,  and  the  penguins. 
But  both  were  dumb  things,  after  all,  that 
could  not  quite  meet  his  mood,  could  not  quite 
satisfy  that  hunger  which  is  in  all  of  us  for 
the  common  association  of  our  kind,  for  the 
humble  jest  and  cheery  laugh  of  a  smiling 
humanity.  Neither  of  them  was  Bobbie,  who 
adds  personality  to  the  penguin,  and  satisfies  a 
double  need. 

Bobbie  would  not  have  talked  Art  with  Rus- 
kin,  and  for  a  very  good  reason, —  he  knows 
nothing  about  it.  Bobbie  would  not  have  cared 


'Penguin  'Persons  13 

a  snap  about  his  Turners,  though  he  would  have 
been  greatly  reverent  of  them  for  their  owner's 
sake.  But  Bobbie  would  have  enjoyed  tramping 
over  the  mountains  with  him,  an  eager  and  alert 
listener  to  all  his  talks  about  geology  and  clouds, 
and  ten  to  one  Bobbie  would  have  made  friends 
of  every  peasant  they  met,  every  fellow  traveler 
on  the  road,  and  taught  Ruskin  in  turn  a  good 
bit  about  humdrum,  picturesque  mankind.  And 
he  would  have  made  him  laugh!  Possibly  you 
think  it  incongruous,  impossible,  the  picture  of 
happy-go-lucky,  ridiculous  Bobbie,  with  his  slang 
and  his  grin  and  his  outlook  on  life,  and  Ruskin, 
the  great  critic,  the  master  of  style,  the  intellec 
tual  giant.  But  then  you  reckon  without  Bob 
bie's  quality  of  Penguinity,  and  without  Ruskin's 
humanness.  It  is  alike  impossible  to  withstand 
the  contagion '  of  Bobbie's  Penguinity,  and  to 
fancy  a  genius  so  great  that  he  does  not  at  times 
yearn  for  the  common  walks  and  the  common 
talks  of  his  humbler  fellow  creatures.  He  may 
not  always  know  how  to  achieve  them,  his  own 
greatness  may  be  a  barrier  he  cannot  cross,  or  his 
temperament  and  circumstances  may  hinder;  but 
be  sure  that  he  feels  the  loss,  though  he  may  not 
himself,  for  all  his  genius,  be  quite  aware  of  it. 
That  Ruskin  lived  in  moody  isolation,  while 
Shakespeare  caroused  in  an  alehouse,  does  not 
prove  Ruskin  the  greater  man  or  the  deeper 
seer;  it  only  shows  that  one  knew  how  to 


14  'Penguin  ^Persons 

achieve  what  the  other  did  not, — contadt  with 
the  everyday,  merry  world,  escape  from  the 
awful  and  everlasting  solemnity  of  life.  Rus- 
kin  could  not  achieve  it  for  himself,  he  did 
not  know  how;  but  Bobbie,  all  unknown  to 
either  of  them,  would  have  shown  him.  Bob 
bie  would  have  made  life  for  him  "sympa 
thetically  ridiculous/'  for  Bobbie  is  a  Penguin 
Person.  And  Bobbie  would  have  been  a  living, 
breathing  human  being,  by  his  side  and  ready 
to  aid  him,  even  to  creep  into  his  heart;  not 
a  stuffed  biped  on  a  shelf  in  a  musty  museum. 
Poor  Ruskin,  how  much  life  robbed  him  of 
when  it  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  win 
in  his  youth  the  careless,  unthinking,  but  undy 
ing  friendship  of  a  few  men  like  Bobbie,  a  few 
Penguin  Persons! 

Ah,  well!  "The  dice  of  God  are  always 
loaded."  Doubtless  we  must  always  pay  for 
greatness  by  isolation,  or  some  more  bitter  toll. 
And  for  our  insignificance,  in  turn,  come  the 
Bobbies  as  reward.  It  behooves  those  of  us, 
then,  who  are  insignificant,  to  appreciate  our 
blessing,  to  cherish  our  penguins,  the  more  since 
we,  when  "the  world  is  too  much  with  us," 
when  the  tyranny  of  economic  conditions  op 
presses  and  the  wrongness  of  life  seems  almost 
more  than  we  can  bear,  have  not  that  inward 
strength,  that  Titanic  defiance,  which  is  the 
possession  of  the  great,  ultimately  to  fall  back 


^Penguin  Persons  15 

upon,  and  so  sorely  need  to  be  shown  a  joke 
somewhere,  anywhere,  in  the  universal  scheme, 
to  find  something  that  is  "sympathetically  ridic 
ulous."  That  is  why  the  Penguin  Persons  are 
sent  to  us;  thus  we  can  see  in  them  the  swing 
of  the  Emersonian  pendulum. 

But  they  are  naturally  modest,  and  doubtless 
have  no  idea  of  their  mission,  further  than  to 
realize  that  "people  are  glad  to  have  them 
around,"  as  Bobbie  would  express  it,  and  that  it 
is  "up  to  them"  (in  the  same  idiom)  to  be 
cheerful, — not  a  hard  task,  since  cheeriness  sits 
in  their  soul.  It  is  awful  to  think  how  self- 
conciousness  might  ruin  the  flavor  of  their  Pen- 
guinity  if  they  ever  were  awakened  to  a  reali 
zation  of  the  fact  that  they  were  involved  in 
anything  so  serious  as  the  Law  of  Compensa 
tion!  Though  I  do  believe  that  David  at  his 
best  could  make  the  eternal  verities  look  ridic 
ulous.  No,  when  the  Penguin  Persons  do  be 
come  aware  of  their  Penguinity,  it  is  in  a 
funny,  shamefaced  fashion,  as  if  they  had  been 
up  to  boyish  tricks  their  manhood  should  blush 
for.  Came  Bobbie  to  me  the  other  day  and 
confessed  that  he  had  about  made  up  his  mind 
to  be  "serious." 

"Everybody  thinks  I'm  a  joke,"  he  said,  with 
a  melancholy  grin;  "they  always  expect  me  to 
say  something  asinine,  and  get  ready  to  laugh 
before  I  speak.  What  shall  I  do?" 


16  'Penguin  ^Persons 

"Do!"  I  cried.  Do  what  you've  been  doing, 
only  do  it  more.  Keep  right  on  being  a  Pen 
guin,  and  God  bless  you!" 

Bobbie  looked  perplexed  and  a  little  hurt;  but 
I  was  too  wise  to  explain,  and  three  minutes  later 
he  was  rattling  off  some  delicious  absurdity  to 
my  four-year-old  hopeful,  who  had  fallen  down 
on  his  nose  and  needed  comforting — and  a  han- 
kerchief.  Bobbie  was  supplying  the  latter  from 
his  pocket,  and  from  his  penguinacious  brain  the 
former  was  effectively  coming  in  the  shape  of  a 
description  of  Rocky  Mountain  sheep,  which, 
according  to  Bobbie,  have  right-side  legs  much 
shorter  than  their  left-side  legs,  so  they  can  run 
along  the  mountain  slopes  without  ever  falling 
on  their  noses. 

"But  how  do  they  get  back?"  asks  the  hope 
ful,  still  bleeding,  but  eager  for  information. 

"They  put  their .  heads  between  their  hind 
legs  and  run  backward,"  says  Bobbie.  "They 
have  long  necks,  you  know." 

That,  of  course,  may  be  unnatural  history,  but 
it  was  a  very  present  help  in  time  of  trouble. 
Indeed,  it  made  Bobbie,  as  well  as  the  boy,  for 
get,  and  I  have  heard  no  more  of  his  dreadful 
intention  to  be  serious. 

Some  one  —  probably  it  was  Emerson  —  once 
said,  "Each  man  has  his  own  vocation.  The 
talent  is  the  call."  It  is  no  small  thing,  in  this 
grim  world,  to  make  people  smile,  to  be  absur^ 


"Penguin  "Persons  17 

for  their  alleviation,  to  render  all  things  "sympa 
thetically  ridiculous"  for  a  time,  to  bear  in  a 
chalice  of  mirth  the  water  of  Lethe.  If  one's 
talent  lies  that  way,  why,  the  call  should  be 
clear!  The  Penguin  Person  should  have  no 
doubt  or  shame  of  his  vocation,  nor  should  any 
one  else  allow  him  to.  Little  Joe  Weber,  who 
was  on  the  stage  the  most  perfect  example  of 
Penguinity,  was  as  a  stage  character  beloved  of 
all  the  thousands  who  saw  him.  He  heard  his 
call  and  followed  his  vocation,  and  honor  and 
wealth  and  fame  are  now  his.  The  merry  host 
of  Penguin  Persons  who  move  outside  the  radius 
of  the  spluttering  calcium,  whose  proscenium  is 
the  door  frame  of  a  home,  may  earn  neither 
wealth  nor  fame  by  doing  as  he  has  done,  but 
they  will  win  no  less  a  reward,  for  they  will 
have  lightened  for  all  around  them  the  burdens 
of  life,  they  will  have  smoothed  the  gathering 
frown  and  summoned  the  forgotten  laugh,  they 
will  have  made  of  the  ridiculous  a  little  religion, 
and  out  of  Penguinity  brought  peace. 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping 

\VHEN  the  ordinary  American  who  "does 
things'' — atrocious  phrase,  symbol  of  our  un- 
recking  materialism  that  does  not  consider 
the  value  of  the  things  done — wants  to  give 
a  place  a  name,  he  affixes  his  own,  or  that  of 
his  sister-in-law  or  the  congressman  from  his 
district.  Thus  our  noblest  North  American 
mountain  is  called  McKinley,  though  it  already 
bore  a  beautiful  Indian  name — Denali,  "The 
Great  One";  and  thus  in  Glacier  Park  we  find 
a  Lake  McDermott,  a  Lake  McDonald,  and  a 
Mount  Jackson,  to  contrast  painfully  with  such 
beautiful  titles  as  Going-to-the-Sun  Mountain, 
Rising  Wolf  Mountain,  and  Morning  Eagle 
Falls.  The  Indians  expressed  their  poetry  in 
their  names.  The  pioneers  and  the  colonial 
rural  Americans  expressed,  if  not  poetry,  at 
least  a  fine,  spicy  flavor  of  the  local  tradition; 
their  names  grew  out  of  the  place.  In  the 
corner  of  New  England  where  I  was  born  we 
had  a  Slab  City,  a  Tearbreeches  Hill,  a  Puddin' 
P'int — well-flavored  names,  all  of  them,  de 
scriptive  and  significant,  even  the  last,  which 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T>ic^  19 

strangers  mispronounced  Pudding  Point.  Even 
in  old  New  York  there  were  once  such  names 
rich  in  historical  association  as  Long  Acre 
Square,  now  reduced  to  Times  Square  to  please 
the  vanity  or  cupidity  of  a  newspaper.  But, 
save  the  Indians,  no  body  of  people  on  this 
continent,  not  even  the  old-time  cowboys  and 
prospectors  with  their  Bright  Angel  Trail,  have 
ever  rivaled  the  southern  highlanders,  the  moun 
tain  folk  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  the  Great  Smokies 
and  the  Cumberlands,  in  the  bestowal  of  pic 
turesque  titles.  It  is  hard,  sometimes,  to  say 
whether  the  southern  mountaineers  are  poets 
or  humorists  or  realists;  they  may  be  one  or  the 
other,  or  all  three  at  once.  But  they  never  fail 
with  the  inevitable  appellation.  Not  Flaubert 
with  his  one  right  word,  not  the  school  "gang" 
with  its  nicknames,  can  equal  them. 

Thumping  Dick  Hollow,  Milk-sick  Hollow, 
Little  Fiery  Gizzard  Creek,  Falling  Water  Cove, 
Maniac's  Hell,  Lost  Creek  Cove,  Jump  Off 
Point,  Rainbow  Hollow,  Slaughterpen  Hollow 
— they  come  back  to  me  in  picturesque  array, 
and  with  them  come  back  the  memories  of 
the  gray  cabins,  the  clear  bright  water  on  the 
race,  the  silent  forests,  the  billows  of  laurel,  the 
song  of  the  brown  thrashers,  the  shy  children 
in  a  dusky  doorway,  the  lean  pigs  not  shy  at  all, 
the  bloodroot  underfoot,  the  soft,  hazy  sky 
overhead,  the  sense  that  here  life  was  always  as 


2O  Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T>i 

it  is,  and  always  will  be,  with  no  change  but 
the  changing  seasons.  I  remember  once  more 
how  I  met  the  Spring  at  Thumping  Dick,  like 
a  dryad  dancing  through  the  wood,  caught  her 
in  the  very  a6t  of  climbing  up  from  the  cove 
below  to  find  a  road  to  take  her  north.  So  we 
loitered  together  for  one  whole,  blissful  day, 
and  when  I  came  back  to  the  college  campus  I 
wore  her  violets  in  my  hat. 

But  first  I  must  tell  you  how  Thumping 
Dick  Hollow  got  its  name.  That  is  more  im 
portant  even  than  knowing  where  it  is.  Many, 
many  years  ago,  so  long  ago  that  all  traces  of 
his  cabin  have  disappeared,  a  man  called  Dick 
dwelt  beside  the  little  brown  brook  which  flows 
through  a  slight  hollow  on  its  way  to  the  cove 
below.  Now,  this  Dick  was  averse  to  over 
much  effort,  unless  it  were  effort  connected  with 
the  pursuit  of  bears  or  panther,  and  being  of 
an  ingenious  turn  of  mind  he  invented  a  labor- 
saving  device  to  pound  his  corn.  (Unfortu 
nately,  he  still  had  to  grow  it  himself.)  He 
took  a  hollow  log  and  pivoted  it  across  the 
brook,  at  a  little  fall,  in  such  a  way  that  the 
upper  end  would  rest  in  the  water  while  the 
lower  end  projected  over  the  rocks  below  the 
falls.  Then  he  fastened  a  board  across  the 
lower  half  of  this  lower  opening,  and  under 
neath  the  log,  also  at  the  lower  end,  he  fixed  a 
pestle.  He  then  placed  his  mortar  on  a  stone 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  *Dic^  21 

directly  beneath.  The  water,  flowing  into  the 
hollow  log,  ran  to  the  lower  end  and  piled  up 
against  the  board  till  there  was  weight  enough 
to  tip  the  entire  log  down.  Then  enough  ran 
out  to  tilt  the  log  back  again.  Of  course,  each 
time  the  lower  end  of  the  log  descended  the 
pestle  struck  a  blow  in  the  mortar.  All  Dick 
had  to  do  was  now  and  then  to  empty  out  his 
pounded  grain  and  put  in  a  fresh  supply.  The 
log  kept  at  its  solemn  seesaw  night  and  day,  its 
dull  thumps  resounding  through  the  woods.  So 
Thumping  Dick  Hollow  it  is  to  this  day,  and 
being  close  to  Sewanee,  Tennessee,  instead  of 
New  York  City,  Thumping  Dick  Hollow  it 
will  remain,  instead  of  becoming  the  Pratt 
Street  section  of  Elmhurst  Manor. 

To  be  precise,  it  is  four  miles  from  Sewanee, 
and  to  be  more  precise,  Sewanee  is  eight  miles 
straight  up  hill  from  Cowan,  and  to  be  still 
more  precise,  Cowan  is  thirty-five  or  forty  miles 
from  Chattanooga,  and  now  you  begin  to  know 
where  you  are.  Chattanooga,  as  you  know,  is 
in  Tennessee,  and  sits  beside  the  superb  Moc 
casin  Bend  of  the  Tennessee  River,  under  the 
shadow  of  Lookout  Mountain,  entirely  sur 
rounded  by  freight  trains.  It  runs  Schene&ady, 
New  York,  a  close  race  for  the  title  of  the 
noisiest  city  in  the  United  States.  But  after  you 
have  taken  a  west-bound  train  in  the  quaint  old 
station  of  the  N.  C.  &  St.  L.  railroad  you  pass 


22  Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T)i 

rapidly  into  silence,  down  the  gorge  of  the 
splendid  river,  and  then  into  the  broken,  ragged 
hills.  At  Cowan  a  pig  meets  you  on  the  plat 
form,  with  the  amiable  curiosity  of  the  small 
town  resident  toward  the  arriving  stranger. 
Here  you  change  to  the  little  branch  line  which 
runs  north,  up  the  side  of  the  gorge,  to  the 
coal  mines.  Up  and  up  the  train  climbs,  puffing 
and  straining,  through  a  tall  forest  of  hard 
woods,  and  eventually  reaches  an  almost  level 
plateau.  Once  on  this  plateau,  you  lose  all 
sense  of  mountain  country  and  if  you  had  not 
been  aware  of  the  steep  climb  to  get  here,  you 
would  not  believe  that  you  were  on  the  southern 
nose  of  the  Cumberland  Range.  Presently  you 
reach  a  station — and  that  is  Sewanee. 

There  are  no  academic  squatters  at  Sewanee, 
in  their  $100,000  cottages,  as  there  are  at 
Princeton.  It  is  too  far  removed  from  any 
cities,  in  the  midst  of  its  timbered  mountain 
domain.  There  is  a  little  hotel,  much  fre 
quented  in  summer,  to  be  sure,  but  for  the  most 
part  the  town  is  the  university  and  its  prepara 
tory  academy,  and  the  university  is  the  town. 
Here  is  the  Gothic  chapel,  the  ivy-clad  scho 
lastic  buildings,  the  tree-shaded  campus  walks, 
the  wandering  groups  of  hatless  boys,  the  en 
circling  street  lined  with  professors'  houses — all 
the  traditional  flavor  of  a  college,  in  a  setting 
of  forest.  For  it  is  one  of  the  unique  charms 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T>ic{^  23 

of  Sewanee  that  a  walk  of  a  mile  in  any  direc 
tion  is  a  walk  back  into  the  ancient  order,  into 
the  wilderness  of  the  southern  mountaineer, 
into  the  eighteenth  century.  A  class  that 
studies  Shaw's  plays  in  the  morning  may  even 
catch  the  vocabulary  of  Shakespeare  in  the 
afternoon,  repeated  unconsciously  by  the  lips  of 
mountain  children  in  the  coves. 

The  word  cove  is  omnipresent  here.  Even  the 
mountain  folk  are  called  cove-ites.  It  needs  but 
a  short  walk  to  show  you  why.  The  lower 
Cumberlands,  on  the  southern  border  of  Ten 
nessee,  are  unlike  any  other  mountain  region, 
w^ith  a  charm  all  their  own,  inherent  in  their 
topography.  Apparently  an  almost  level  stretch 
of  timbered  country  along  the  little  railroad,  in 
reality  this  level  is  the  plateau  top  of  a  great 
rock  wall,  a  kind  of  huge  mesa  extending  north 
and  south.  If  you  walk  to  the  edge,  you  dis 
cover  that  it  suddenly  falls  away  with  startling 
abruptness,  sometimes  in  sheer  descents  of 
several  hundred  feet  till  the  top  of  the  ancient 
shale  pile  is  reached  (now  covered  deep  with 
soil)  and  then  dropping  away  more  gradually 
with  that  lovely  curve  of  debris.  But  nowhere 
is  this  Palisade-like  wall  continuous,  and  here 
is  where  the  southern  Cumberlands  get  their 
unique  flavor.  The  descending  water  from  the 
plateau  top  has  eroded  deep  into  the  precipice 
every  mile  or  even  every  half  mile,  each  brook 


24  Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  'Di 


in  the  course  of  ages  eating  far  back  into  the 
mountain  mass,  forming  a  V-shaped  depression 
called  a  cove,  and  between  two  coves  thus 
formed  is  a  reverse  A,  called  a  point,  always, 
naturally,  composed  of  the  hardest  rock,  and 
not  infrequently  ending  in  a  literal  point  so 
sharp  that  it  is  like  a  vast  granite  bowsprit 
thrust  out  into  the  green  plains  far  below,  ter 
minating  in  a  sheer  precipice  of  several  hundred 
feet.  Roughly,  then,  you  may  visualize  this 
section  of  the  Cumberlands  as  a  giant  double- 
edged  saw,  a  thousand  feet  thick,  laid  down 
across  the  State,  each  tooth  a  "point,"  each  V 
between  the  teeth  a  "cove."  Standing  far  out 
on  one  of  these  rock  bowsprits,  in  the  soft,  hazy 
air  of  the  southern  mountains,  you  look  over  the 
far  valley  lands  below,  you  look  north  and  south 
at  the  other  thrusting  bowsprits  growing  bluer 
and  more  mysterious  as  they  recede,  you  look 
to  left  and  right  down  into  the  timbered  green 
lushness  of  the  coves,  where  invisible  water 
tinkles. 

But  the  simile  of  the  saw  is  only  a  rough 
one,  after  all,  because  erosion  is  never  mathe 
matical,  some  coves  have  bitten  back  far  deeper 
than  others,  side  coves  have  developed,  and  if 
you  follow  down  the  mystery  of  some  brown 
brook,  Little  Fiery  Gizzard  Creek,  let  us  say, 
for  love  of  the  name,  you  may  very  soon  pre 
cipitate  yourself  into  such  a  maze  of  coves,  such 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T>ick^  25 

a  tangle  of  tough,  tearing  shrubbery  (the  term 
"laurel  hell"  is  the  mountaineer  as  realist),  that 
you  will  regret,  perhaps,  the  day  you  abandoned 
what  in  this  region  is  euphemistically  called  a 
road.  But  you  will  hardly  forget  the  view 
from  some  inland  point,  where  you  look,  not 
out  over  the  Tennessee  plains,  but  over  a 
branching  canon  of  coves,  cut  like  the  Grand 
Canon  out  of  an  apparent  plain,  but,  unlike 
that  epic  of  naked  magnificence,  timbered  with 
great,  upstanding  hardwoods  from  floor  to  rim, 
a  soft,  silent,  hazy  green  hole  where  the  forest 
floor  has  sunk  a  thousand  feet,  to  rise  again  in 
the  smoky  distance  and  melt  into  the  blue. 
There  is  no  sign  of  human  habitation,  though 
in  those  coves,  where  the  forest  mould  is  rich 
to  clear  and  cultivate  and  the  springs  are  never 
dry,  the  cove-ites  dwell,  stock  of  the  highlanders 
who  are  almost  a  race  apart  in  the  fastnesses  of 
our  southern  Appalachians.  They  have  no  roads, 
only  dim  trails  or  footpaths.  The  protecting 
forest  hides  their  little  clearings.  Only  a  hawk 
sails  on  silent  wings  over  the  leafy  depths,  and 
perhaps  the  faintest  thread  of  smoke  winds  up 
and  is  lost  in  the  haze  of  the  air,  a  haze  which 
seems  faintly  tinged  with  the  all-pervading  green. 
But  I  wander  as  aimlessly  as  the  enchanted 
visitor  to  Sewanee,  and  am  by  way  of  forgetting 
that  it  was  Spring  I  set  out  to  recapture  with 
my  pen — as  if  one  could  recapture  the  vanished 


26  Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T)icf( 

Aprils!  It  was  April,  to  be  sure,  early  April, 
very  cold  in  the  Berkshires,  with  great,  dirty 
drifts  of  snow  still  lingering  on  the  northern 
sides  of  walls  and  hedges,  and  ice  on  the  pools 
of  a  morning.  Down  here  on  the  Cumberland 
plateau  the  trees  were  still  bare,  too,  and  the 
mornings  chill,  though  you  could  easily  find  a 
blade  of  grass  "big  enough  to  blow,"  and  the 
brown  thrashers  sang  in  the  dooryards.  But 
there  came  a  day  when  the  sun  rose  misty  and 
hot,  and  I  wandered  out  through  the  woods,  by 
a  dim,  sandy  cart  track,  missing  the  solemn 
evergreen  note  of  our  northern  forests  but  happy 
in  the  fragrance  of  life  reviving  under  last  year's 
leaves — that  peculiar  odor  of  the  woods  in 
Spring.  The  little  brown  brook  at  Thumping 
Dick  was  softly  vocal,  and  it,  too,  smelled  of 
leaves.  After  a  time  I  reached  a  point  which 
jutted  out  diredHy  over  the  tops  of  the  trees 
growing  on  the  debris  pile  below.  These  trees 
were  as  tall  as  masts,  and  as  straight,  though 
they  were  hardwoods,  and  from  my  rocky  perch 
I  looked  through  their  upper  tracery  of  budding 
twigs,  as  through  a  veil  of  faint  green  and  red, 
out  on  the  brown  and  green  plains  of  Tennessee 
shining  in  the  sun,  or  left  and  right  across  the 
canons  of  the  coves  to  the  stately  procession  of 
receding  headlands.  Then  I  cast  about  for  a 
way  down  into  one  of  the  coves,  and  presently 
came  upon  a  footpath. 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T>ick^  27 

It  led  down  the  headwall  by  sharp  switch 
backs  till  it  reached  the  easier  declivity  below, 
passed  a  gushing  spring  where  a  tin  dipper  hung 
on  a  twig  proclaiming  unseen  passers,  and 
presently  picked  up  the  bed  of  a  tumbling 
brook.  It  was  when  I  reached  this  brook  that 
I  was  aware  of  Spring  coming  up  the  slope.  I 
could  see  ahead,  and  to  either  side,  a  consider 
able  distance  through  the  open  woods,  and,  lo! 
the  Judas  trees  were  in  flower,  stray  bursts  or 
purplish  pink  lighting  up  the  forest  floor  like 
bright-robed,  wandering  dryads.  (The  mountain 
folk  call  this  shrub  the  red-bud.)  I  loitered  on 
down  the  brook  side,  through  moist  leaf-mould 
and  rocks,  while  overhead  the  trees  began  to 
cover  me  with  their  frail,  new  foliage,  and 
under  foot  the  forest  floor  began  to  burgeon 
with  bloom.  Great  double  bloodroots  came 
first — I  stepped  suddenly  into  a  garden  of  them 
and  hastily  stooping  crushed  some  juice  on  my 
fingers.  Next  the  umbrella  tops  of  the  May 
apple  leaves  began  to  push  up.  There  was  a 
great  dogwood  tree  in  full  bloom  beside  the 
path.  A  hedge-like  bank  of  azaleas  were  show 
ing  bud.  Then  came  the  violets,  yellow  violets, 
wood  violets,  but  especially  the  birdfoot  variety, 
with  their  pink-tinged  blue  petals  ubiquitous 
amid  the  leaves.  To  me  this  violet  is  particu 
larly  dear,  for  it  was  the  flower  which  in  my 
childhood  was  culled  to  fill  those  bright-colored 


28  Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T^l 

May  baskets  we  hung  upon  our  sweethearts' 
doors  at  the  festival  of  Spring,  gathering  them 
in  the  village  cemetery,  where  they  grew  in 
great  beauty  and  profusion,  quite  as  Omar  would 
have  expected.  Now  I  gathered  a  handful 
again,  for  memory's  sake,  and  stuck  them  in 
the  band  of  my  hat,  before  I  resumed  my  jour 
ney  down  the  cove. 

The  first  intimation  I  had  of  coming  habi 
tation  was  a  pig,  a  lean,  black,  razor-back  pig 
which  grunted  at  my  intrusion  beneath  his  oak 
tree  and  went  racing  off  at  a  great  pace,  almost 
gracefully,  I  might  say,  for  even  a  pig  which 
wanders  on  a  mountainside  develops  something 
of  the  agility  of  a  wild  creature.  Not  far  beyond 
I  came  quite  suddenly  upon  such  a  picture  as  you 
may  see  nowhere  in  the  world  but  in  our  southern 
highlands,  in  the  Spring.  Aware  of  my  coming, 
if  I  was  not  aware  of  their  proximity,  six  tow- 
headed,  bare -footed,  single -gar  men  ted  children, 
the  eldest  a  girl  not  over  ten,  the  youngest  an  in 
fant  just  able  to  stand,  were  ranged  in  solemn  row, 
like  a  flight  of  steps,  upon  the  top  of  a  large  flat 
stone  at  the  edge  of  a  little  clearing,  in  perfect 
silence  watching  jne  approach,  the  violets  and 
bloodroot  blossoms  they  had  been  gathering 
dangling  in  loose  bunches  from  their  hands. 
Behind  them,  just  across  the  brook  which  ran, 
like  a  road,  in  front  of  the  gate,  stood  a  weath 
ered-gray  cabin,  of  rough  boards,  with  a  central 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T)ic^  29 

doorway  and  windows  without  sashes.  At  one 
end  was  an  outside  chimney  of  field-stone,  laid, 
it  seemed,  with  clay.  Surrounding  this  cabin 
was  a  rough  picket  fence,  again  of  untrimmed 
boards,  with  a  gate  opening  on  the  brook  and 
stepping  stones  across  to  the  path.  In  the  littk 
compound  thus  enclosed,  and  almost  overtopping 
the  cabin,  were  half  a  dozen  peach  and  plum 
trees,  veritable  geyser  jets  of  pink  and  white 
bloom.  Behind,  in  a  small  clearing,  was  the 
stubble  of  last  year's  corn.  Squalid  and  poor 
and  mean  enough  a  dwelling,  a  shiftless  clear 
ing,  a  dirty  family  of  children — yes.  But  under 
its  geyser  jets  of  blossom  that  little  gray  cabin 
was  the  essence  of  the  picturesque,  with  the 
forest  wall  rising  behind  it,  and  behind  that  the 
great  headwall  of  the  cove.  It  was  weathered 
and  old  and  primitive  and  lovely;  and  the  six 
little  shy  ragamuffins  on  the  stone,  still  staring 
at  me  with  the  eyes  of  timid  animals,  were — 
well,  they  were  six  little  shy  ragamuffins,  and 
that  is  nice  enough! 

"Hello,"  said  I,  "I  see  you've  got  the  baby 
out  to  gather  wild  flowers,  too." 

The  eldest  girl  found  speech,  after  an  effort. 
"That  ain't  the  baby,"  she  said,  with  a  show  of 
scorn  for  my  ignorance.  "The  baby's  in  the 
house  with  maw." 

My  respect  for  the  capacity  of  that  little 
cabin  was  still  further  increased  by  this  reve- 


30  Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  cDi 


lation.  I  asked  the  eldest  girl  some  questions 
about  the  way,  finding  her  directions  for  spot 
ting  a  trail  in  this  forest  maze  remarkably  lucid, 
and  went  again  on  my  wanderings,  my  last  back 
ward  glimpse  of  the  mouse-gray  cabin  under  its 
pink  and  white  geysers  of  blossom  still  showing 
the  six  little  tow-headed,  barefooted  youngsters 
standing  like  six  little  patiences  on  a  pedestal, 
staring  after  me.  But  when  I  had  disappeared 
down  the  trail  I  heard  from  far  off,  mingling 
with  the  murmur  of  the  brook,  the  shrill  sound 
of  childish  glee,  as  they  resumed  their  search  for 
wild  flowers.  Then  it  was  that  Spring  smiled, 
and  gave  my  fingers  a  little  squeeze! 

So  I  wandered  on,  with  Spring  for  company, 
all  that  blissful  day,  through  forests  of  oak  and 
chestnut  where  the  Judas  trees  danced,  past  dog 
wood  thickets  and  over  beds  of  violets,  into  un 
expected  little  clearings  where  always  the  same 
gray  cabin  of  rough,  weathered  boards  sat  under 
its  geyser  jets  of  pink  and  white,  while  shy, 
pretty  children  peeped  like  startled  rabbits  from 
the  dim  doorway  and  the  pig  ran  off  through 
the  woods  (when  he  did  not  follow  me),  and 
finally  up  the  steep  slope  at  the  head  of  a  cove 
again,  into  the  region  of  the  earliest  bloodroots, 
and  so  to  the  final  shin  up  the  last  precipitous 
wall  to  the  plateau  above.  As  I  reached  the 
summit  and  looked  back,  I  saw  the  cove  was 
green,  and  the  veil  I  had  gazed  through  that 


Spring  Comes  to  Thumping  T>ic^  3 1 

morning  was  hazier  now;  Spring  had  climbed 
with  me  back  up  the  slope  and  even  here  on  the 
two-thousand  foot  rim  the  trees  were  bursting 
into  leaf.  There  was  a  carpet  of  brilliant  red 
stonecrop  on  the  rock  at  my  feet.  As  I  came 
once  more  to  the  brook  in  Thumping  Dick  I 
saw  a  bloodroot  on  the  bank,  with  the  dead  leaf 
it  had  that  day  pushed  up  still  clinging  to  it. 
Yes — and  here  was  a  tiny  bed  of  violets,  in  a 
warm,  sheltered  glade,  opening  to  the  sun.  I 
gathered  them  all,  and  redecorated  my  hat. 
Then  I  bathed  my  hot  face  in  the  brook  and 
lay  listening  to  a  thrasher  for  a  while,  as  the 
long  shadows  of  afternoon  crept  like  lean,  ghostly 
fingers  through  the  forest  and  between  me  and 
the  sky  I  could  see  the  lacework  of  the  budding 
twigs,  with  here  and  there  a  tree  that  actually 
showed  leaf.  No  one  passed  me  on  the  trail. 
The  thrasher  and  I  had  the  woods  all  to  our 
selves,  except,  of  course,  for  Spring,  who  sat 
beside  me  singing  mezza  <uoce,  to  herself,  a  song 
curiously  like  the  ripple  of  a  brook. 

At  last  I  rose  and  followed  the  dim  trail  back 
toward  the  college,  entering  the  campus  as  the 
evening  lights  were  coming  on  in  the  dormitory 
windows,  and  somewhere  a  group  of  boys  were 
singing,  not  lustily  but  with  the  plaintive 
quality  that  sometimes  steals  into  the  voices  of 
the  young  and  happy  at  the  twilight  hour.  I 
tossed  my  hat  on  a  table,  and  saw  my  withered 


32  Spring  Comes  to  Thumping 

violets  falling  dejectedly  over  the  band.  But  I 
did  not  care.  Back  below  Thumping  Dick  was 
a  cove  full  on  the  march,  coming  up  the  slope, 
the  blue  battalions  of  the  Spring.  Outside,  in 
the  smoky,  warm  dusk,  a  thrasher  still  sang. 
Spring  had  left  me,  for  she  had  far  to  go,  but  all 
the  way  north  I  should  see  the  signs  where  her 
feet  had  trod,  and  when  at  last  I  reached  once 
more  my  northern  mountain  home,  I  should  find 
her  waiting  with  a  smile,  perhaps  with  just  a 
trillium  in  her  hand  to  offer  me,  before  she  sped 
on  again  toward  Labrador.  But,  I  thought,  I 
could  never  know  her  quite  so  well  again  as  I 
had  this  day;  she  would  not  loiter  with  me  quite 
so  familiarly,  with  her  dear,  friendly  squeeze  of 
my  fingers  as  the  childish  voices  drifted  with  the 
brook  song  down  the  cove.  I  had  kept  tryst 
with  Spring  at  Thumping  Dick,  for  once  the 
favored  of  all  her  myriad  lovers. 


The  'Passing  of  the  Stage  Sundial 

IT  HAS  been  many  years  since  I  have  seen  a  sun 
dial  on  the  stage.  There  was  a  time  when  the 
stage  could  not  get  along  without  them;  but 
styles  have  changed.  "Iram  indeed  has  gone 
with  all  his  rose,"  and  Eddie  Sothern,  best  be 
loved  of  romantic  adtors  in  your  generation  and 
mine,  has  written  his  theatrical  memoires,  which 
is  the  player's  method  of  saying  farewell.  The 
Melancholy  Tale  of  Me,  he  calls  them,  perhaps 
because  they  are  not  in  the  least  melancholy — 
a  good  and  sufficient  reason.  Yet  Mr.  Sothern 
strangely  neglects  the  subject  of  sundials  in  his 
book,  although  they  were  his  prop  in  how  many 
a  play  back  in  the  golden  Nineties! — the  golden, 
promise-laden,  contradictory  Nineties,  that  Jin- 
de-siecle  decade  when  Max  Nordau  thundered 
that  we  were  going  to  the  dogs  of  degeneracy, 
and  we  youngsters  knew  that  we  were  headed 
not  alone  for  a  new  heaven,  but  what  is  much 
more  important,  a  new  earth. 

My  school  and  college  days  fell  entirely  in 
the  Nineties,  or  almost  entirely,  for  I  finally 
emerged  with  a  sheepskin  written  in  Latin  I 

3 


34  The  ^P as  sing  of  the  Stage  Sundial 

could  no  longer  translate,  in  June,  1900.  I  saw 
my  first  modern  realistic  play  in  1893,  wnen  I 
was  a  little  junior  middler  at  Phillips  Andover. 
It  was  Shore  Acres,  and  I  have  not  yet  for 
gotten,  after  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  thrill  of 
that  revelation.  It  was  almost  as  if  my  grand 
father's  kitchen  had  been  put  upon  the  stage, 
and  with  Herne  himself  to  play  the  leading  role, 
to  blow  on  the  frosty  pane  that  he  could  peer 
into  the  night,  to  bank  the  fires,  tip  the  stove 
lids,  lock  the  door,  and  climb  slowly  up  to  bed 
while  the  old  kitchen,  in  semi-darkness,  seemed 
like  a  closing  benediclion  before  the  downrush 
of  the  final  curtain,  I  caught  the  poetry  of  the 
commonplace,  I  had  my  first  unconscious  lesson 
in  literary  and  dramatic  fidelity.  And  I  ended 
my  college  days,  a  much  more  sophisticated 
person,  championing  Pinero  and  Jones,  rushing 
eagerly  to  special  performances  of  Ibsen,  and 
ardently  admiring  the  plays  of  G.  B.  Shaw,  two 
of  which,  Arms  and  the  Man  and  The  Devil's 
Disciple,  had  been  acted  in  America  by  Richard 
Mansfield  before  the  end  of  the  century. 

Considering  these  plays  now,  and  their  effect 
upon  me — and  not  forgetting,  either,  the  pas 
sionate  admiration,  almost  the  worship,  we 
young  men  of  twenty  had  in  those  days  for  the 
acting  of  Mrs.  Fiske — it  would  be  easy  to  infer 
that  the  whole  period  of  the  Nineties  for  us 


The  fas  sing  of  the  Stage  Sundial  35 

youngsters  was  a  period  of  revolt  and  forward- 
urging,  that  we  were  crusaders  for  what  Henry 
Arthur  Jones  called  "the  great  realities  of 
modern  life"  in  art.  Crusaders  we  were,  to  be 
sure.  I  well  remember  long  debates  with  my 
father,  a  man  of  old-fashioned  tastes  in  poetry, 
and  a  particular  fondness  for  Burns,  over  the 
merits  of  Kipling's  poems.  (Think  of  consid 
ering  Kipling's  poems  revolutionary!  Indeed, 
think  of  considering  some  of  them  poems!). 
We  debated  from  still  more  divergent  view 
points  over  the  novels  of  d'Annunzio.  In  col 
lege,  in  my  last  year  or  two,  some  of  us  even 
adopted  the  views  of  Tolstoy  in  his  What  is 
Art?  and  under  the  urge  of  this  new  sociolog 
ical  passion  we  took  volunteer  classes  in  night 
schools.  I  remember  instructing  a  group  of 
Jewish  youths  in  the  principles  of  oral  debate, 
or,  rather,  debating  the  principles  of  debating 
with  them,  for  being  unblessed  with  an  expen 
sive  preparatory  school  and  college  education, 
and  being  Jews  into  the  bargain,  they  did  not 
propose  to  take  anything  on  faith.  I  used  to 
return  to  my  room  in  the  college  Yard  wonder 
ing  just  why  it  was  that  these  working  lads, 
mere  "foreigners",  of  a  race  infinitely  inferior, 
of  course,  to  the  Anglo-Saxon,  and  without  the 
precious  boon  of  a  Harvard  training,  had  so 
much  more  real  intellectual  curiosity  and  men 
tal  grasp  than  any  of  us  "superior"  youths. 


36  'The  T as  sing  of  the  Stage  Sundial 

These  classes  interfered  seriously  with  my  aca 
demic  work,  yet  it  seems  to  me  now  that  they 
were  infinitely  more  profitable. 

However,  it  was  a  curious  paradox  of  the 
Nineties  that  while  we  were  discovering  Pinero, 
Ibsen,  Shaw,  Tolstoy,  we  were  also  reading  The 
Prisoner  of  Zenda  and  yielding  ourselves  with 
luxurious  abandon  into  the  arms  of  honey-sweet 
romance.  At  the  very  time  when  the  new, 
realistic  drama  was  leading  us  out  of  a  paste 
board  world  into  something  approximating  an 
intelligent  comment  on  life,  the  cloak-and- 
sword  drama  was  having  a  fine  little  reactionary 
renaissance,  the  calcium  moon  was  shining  down 
on  many  a  gleaming  garden  and  flashing  blade, 
and  ears  were  rapturously  strained  to  catch  the 
murmur  of  love-laden  words.  Then  it  was  that 
the  stage  sundial  flourished  in  all  its  glory, 
generally  flooded,  to  be  sure,  with  moonlight — 
that  peculiar  moonlight  of  the  American 
theatre  which  turns  grease-paint  to  a  horrible 
magenta — and  we  youths,  with  the  divine  flex 
ibility  of  imagination  only  youth  can  know, 
responded  alike  to  Hedda  Gabler  and  <L/#tf  Enemy 
to  the  King. 

Do  you  remember  the  sundial,  exactly  at 
stage  centre,  in  the  latter  play?  In  what  dulcet 
tones,  love-laden,  the  future  Hamlet  and  Mac 
beth  murmured  to  his  lady  fair!  Even  the 
sword  duel  in  the  last  acl,  all  over  the  chamber, 


The  Massing  of  the  Stage  Sundial  37 

across  the  great  bed  ripping  down  the  curtains, 
back  and  forth  with  flash  of  steel  and  rattle  of 
blade,  was  not  so  thrilling  as  that  moonlit  scene 
across  the  dial  plate.  My  constant  companion 
in  those  days  was  a  boy  who  to-day  preaches 
each  week  from  a  famous  pulpit,  with  gravity 
and  eloquence.  He  is  a  man  of  substantial  parts, 
on  whom  life's  bitter  realities  press  very  hard  as 
he  battles  to  relieve  them.  Does  he  now  recall, 
I  wonder,  how  for  weeks  after  we  had  hung 
from  the  gallery  rail  at  *An  Enemy  to  the  King 
he  even  said  "Thank  you,"  when  somebody 
passed  him  a  piece  of  bread,  in  the  deep,  long- 
drawn  tones  of  Sothern's  romantic  passion?  He 
was  a  handsome  youth,  and  I  know  not  what 
mischief  he  wrought  that  winter  in  gentle 
bosoms,  with  his  vocabulary  enlarged  and  ro 
manticized,  his  tones  colored  with  emotion,  as 
he  sought  secluded  corners  at  our  dances  and 
practised  his  new  art.  Our  Tolstoian  moods 
were  not  for  dances,  you  may  be  sure!  We 
lived  in  a  dual  universe.  In  one  world  were 
sundials  and  moonlight  and  the  thrill  of  a 
woman's  eyes;  there  was  slow  music  and  the 
ache  of  unfilled  desire  ever  about  to  be  gratified 
by  some  hoped-for  miracle.  In  the  other  world 
were  only  fa6ts,  hard  fa&s,  and  the  scorn  of 
considering  them  emotionally,  of  considering 
them  in  any  way  but  with  the  intellect.  I  fear 
in  those  days  our  moods  did  not  conned:  intel- 


38  The  Massing  of  the  Stage  Sundial 

left  and  the  fair  sex.  Perhaps  youth  never  does. 
And  perhaps  youth  is  right,  not  in  thus  passing 
judgment  on  women,  for  that  is  not  what  is 
done,  but  in  refusing  to  surrender  any  portion 
of  the  divine  romantic  mystery  of  sex  at  two- 
and-twenty  to  the  cold  light  of  reason.  When 
Shaw  and  Ibsen  wrote,  they  wrote  of  daily  life, 
and  we  were  learning  to  accept  their  contention 
that  it  should  be  written  about  truthfully.  But 
there  was  no  lie  in  these  other  plays,  these  sun 
dial  romances,  for  they  were  not  daily  life,  they 
were  ages  long  ago  and  far  away,  they  belonged 
to  the  Never-Never-Land  of  romantic  fable — of 
dreams  and  the  heart's  desire.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  complete  realist  at  twenty.  Or,  if  there 
is,  he  should  be  interned  as  an  enemy  alien. 

A  generation  has  passed  since  the  Nineties, 
and  there  are  no  stage  sundials  any  more.  Per 
haps  that  is  but  another  way  of  saying  that  I 
am  middle-aged,  but,  upon  my  word,  I  do  not 
think  so.  Do  you  remember  the  sundial  over 
which  Dolly  and  Mr.  Carter  philandered,  the 
one  which  bore  the  motto — 

$ota0  non  numrro  nisi  0mna#? 

I  reread  that  dialogue  the  other  day,  and  cap- 
trued  some  of  the  ancient  thrill.  No,  the  real 
trouble  is  that  a  generation  of  realism,  or  what 
has  passed  for  realism  on  our  American  stage, 
has  done  its  deadly  work.  It  has  killed  romance. 


The  Massing  of  the  Stage  Sundial  39 

That  is  not  at  all  what  realism  was  intended  to 
do.  Indeed,  to  the  larger  view,  romance  is  a 
part  of  the  reality  of  life.  Realism  was  a  re- 
aftion  against  sham  and  falsity  and  sentimental- 
ism,  and,  above  all,  perhaps,  triviality  of  theme. 
But  the  net  result,  so  far  as  the  American  drama 
is  concerned,  seems  to  have  been  the  substitution 
of  a  realistic  setting  and  dialogue  for  a  false  one, 
and  then  a  continuance  of  the  old  sham,  senti- 
mentalism,  triviality.  How  else  can  we  account 
for  the  success  of  Mr.  Belasco?  But  the  taste 
engendered  by  the  realistic  settings  and  dialogue 
has  banished  the  cloak  and  sword  and  sundial, 
stripped  romance  of  its  charm  and  allure;  and 
once  stripped  of  these,  it  ceases  to  be  romance, 
for  it  ceases  to  reach  the  heart  through  the  sense 
of  beauty  and  of  mystery.  We  have  succeeded 
in  substituting  a  chocolate  caramel  for  the  apples 
of  Hesperides. 

Yet  it  cannot  be  that  this  condition  will  be 
permanent.  Comes  a  little  play  like  The  Gypsy 
Trail,  wherein  even  through  the  realistic  setting 
a  strain  of  romance  strikes,  and  all  hearts  re 
spond.  Youth  will  not  be  denied,  but,  like 
Sentimental  Tommy,  will  "find  a  way."  It 
may  be  that  the  old  dualism  of  the  Nineties 
was  the  sane  solution,  as  so  many  of  the  modern 
"art  theatre "  directors  maintain,  at  least  by  their 
practice,  and  the  realistic  drama  should  stick 
relentlessly  to  its  last,  while  romance  flourishes 


40  The  Massing  of  the  Stage  Sundial 

untroubled  by  any  fetters,  in  free,  fantastic,  per 
haps  poetic,  form.  I  do  not  know.  I  only 
know  that  the  sundial  must  come  back  to  the 
stage,  not,  it  may  be,  as  the  garden  ornament 
of  old,  but  in  some  guise  to  further  the  dreams 
and  dear  delusions  of  our  beauty-hungry  hearts. 
For,  as  you  may  have  guessed,  the  sundial  is  a 
symbol. 


On  Singing  Songs  ^ith  One  Finger 

JAMES  HUNEKER  has  pointed  out  that  lovers  of 
the  drama,  who  are  sound  judges  as  well,  too 
frequently  have  so  little  taste  in  music  that  they 
tolerate  or  even  approve  the  most  atrocious 
noises  emitted  in  the  name  of  musical  comedy; 
while  lovers  and  sound  judges  of  music  are  quite 
as  often  woefully  remiss  in  their  knowledge  of 
stagecraft,  accepting  scenery  and  stage  manage 
ment  in  their  opera  which  would  put  men  less 
skilled  in  the  creation  of  theatric  illusion  than 
David  Belasco  to  the  blush. 

How  true  it  is  that  unto  him  who  hath  shall 
be  denied,  and  unto  him  who  hath  not  shall  be 
given  what  the  other  man  could  use  to  such  ad 
vantage!  The  composer  who  can  both  pucker 
the  lips  of  the  gallery-gods  and  satisfy  the  ears  of 
the  musical  critics,  how  infrequent  a  visitor  on 
this  planet!  so  that  Offenbach  and  Sullivan  must 
often  have  suffered  from  loneliness.  The  singer 
who  can  also  a£t,  how  rare  a  song-bird!  The 
interpreter  of  the  lieder  of  Franz  or  Schubert  or 
Grieg  who  will  sacrifice  vocal  display  to  the 
composer's  meaning,  and  who  has  the  fineness 


42          On  Singing  Songs  ^ith  One  Finger 

of  soul  to  grasp  and  make  manifest  the  mood  of 
the  lyric,  how  welcome  a  guest!  And  yet  those 
who  could  write  undying  comic  music  if  only 
they  were  composers,  who  could  lift  the  hearts 
of  their  hearers  into  the  skies  with  "Hark,  hark, 
the  lark,"  if  only  they  could  sing,  are  legion  in 
number.  How  often,  in  short,  like  those  two 
in  Lord  Houghton's  poem,  are  temperament 
and  technique — "strangers  yet." 

So  are  they  in  me,  alas!  total  strangers.  From 
my  earliest  years  I  have  been  filled  with  the  joy 
ous  impulse  of  song,  but  never  were  ears  more 
false  to  the  one  true  pitch  than  mine,  never  was 
voice  less  commensurate  with  ambition.  My 
youthful  dreams,  when  they  were  not  of  foot 
ball  or  swimming,  were  all  of  the  Sirens,  and  I 
deemed  Ulysses,  if  prudent,  none  the  less  a  lack- 
sentiment  sort  of  hero,  not  inspiring  to  know, 
because  he  stopped  his  ears  to  their  song.  The 
jeers  of  my  fellows  long  ago  taught  me  the  bitter 
lesson  to  keep  my  melody  to  myself,  but  the  im 
pulse  is  still  in  me  to  sing,  the  myriad  moods  of 
music  are  still  mine,  and  I  still  consider  Ulysses 
the  first  of  the  Philistines. 

For  some  time  I  thought  my  own  case  unique, 
but  acquaintance  with  a  music  critic  who  cannot 
hum  a  tune,  and  with  a  celestial  tenor  (such 
tenors  are  so  rare  I  fear  this  may  be  too  personal 
for  print)  who  was  the  most  stupid  of  men, 
without  the  slightest  capacity  for  high  passion 


On  Singing  Songs  ^ith  One  Finger         43 

of  any  sort,  convinced  me  of  my  error:  and 
many  subsequent  conversations  with  men  and 
women  like  myself  incapacitated  by  nature  for 
self-expression,  as  well  as  much  listening  to  bad 
singers  with  good  voices,  have  but  forced  con 
viction  home.  And  now,  when  unfeeling  rela 
tives  and  scoffing  friends  smile  the  superior  smile 
of  the  "musically  talented "  at  sight  of  my  piano 
which  I  play  with  one  finger,  and  at  the  pile  of 
music  upon  it,  I  let  them  smile,  calm  in  the  as 
surance  that  songs  and  instrument  are  mine  by 
better  right,  perhaps,  than  theirs,  who  can  raise 
voices  quite  on  pitch  to  the  accompaniment  of 
eight  fingers  and  two  thumbs. 

For,  when  none  of  them  is  by,  I  play  with 
my  one  finger  the  airs  of  the  world's  great  lieder, 
and  hear  from  that  slight  suggestion  the  songs 
as  they  should  be  sung.  As  I  would  rather  read 
Hamlet  in  my  library  than  see  the  average  adtor 
attempt  the  part,  so  I  would  rather  play  Der  Atlas 
with  one  finger,  with  my  own  imagination  call 
ing  forth  the  tragic  power  and  grief,  the  supurb 
climax  of  surprise  and  thunder,  than  hear  it  sung 
by  any  man  at  present  on  the  concert  stage. 
The  poignant  sadness  cross-shot  with  humor  of 
another  of  Schubert's  songs,  The  Hurdy  Curdy, 
vanishes  in  the  concert  room,  melts  hopelessly 
into  the  dulcet  tones  of  the  young  lady  soprano, 
whose  friends  titter  when  she  is  done,  "What  a 
pretty  song."  But  my  one-fingered  rendering — 


44  On  Singing  Songs  ^vith  One  Finger 

aided  in  this  song  by  occasional  jabs  with  three 
fingers  of  the  left  hand — brings  to  my  inward 
ear  the  pathos  of  the  barrel-organ,  heard  over 
the  distant  hum  of  a  careless  city,  laden  with 
the  sorrow  of  all  the  world;  brings  memories, 
too,  of  that  consummate  singer  of  songs,  Mar- 
cella  Sembrich.  Under  the  touch  of  my  blunt 
forefinger  the  songs  of  MacDowell  distill  their 
delicate  melancholy,  that  in  the  homes  of  my 
friends,  where  daughters  ripple  well-dusted  piano 
keys  and  display  expensive  voices,  yield  only 
treacle  and  honey.  Why  should  I  mind  the 
supercilious  smile  of  my  neighbor  next  door 
when  he  occasionally  catches  me  at  my  unidigi- 
tal  performance,  he  who  is  a  soloist  in  a  noted 
church  choir,  but  who,  I  very  well  know,  pre 
fers  The  Palms  or  Over  There  to  Purcell's  I'll 
sail  upon  the  Dog  Sfar,  if,  indeed,  he  ever  heard 
the  madly  melodious  boast  of  the  "roaring  boy"? 
After  all,  there  is  nothing  wonderful  in  this. 
It  but  shows  that  the  genius  which  creates  and 
the  imagination  which  appreciates  are  akin,  even 
as  Professor  Spingarn  has  asserted.  Even  operas 
and  symphonies  were  composed  at  a  piano. 
Strauss  heard  the  one  hundred  and  five  instru 
ments  which  are  called  on  to  represent  the  cry 
of  the  baby  in  his  Symphonia  T)omestica  all  toot 
ing  and  scraping  in  the  notes  his  ten  fingers 
evoked  from  his  piano  keys.  (Personally  I 
should  rather  have  heard  them  so!)  And  why 


On  Singing  Songs  ^ith  One  Finger          45 

cannot  I  hear  at  least  a  simple  little  song  in  the 
melody  that  my  one  finger  plays?  The  numer 
ical  ratio  is  in  my  favor,  surely,  although  my 
neighbor  would  doubtless  rudely  suggest  that  I 
am  not  Richard  Strauss.  At  any  rate,  for  me 
there  is  a  great  joy  in  singing  songs  as  they 
ought  to  be  sung,  if  only  with  one  finger,  which 
has  done  much  to  console  me  for  the  technical 
powers  nature  has  so  plentifully  denied  me.  I 
offer  the  same  solution  to  all  others  who  are  in 
my  case,  only  suggesting  that  it  would  be  wise 
of  them,  perhaps,  to  learn  while  they  are  yet 
plastic  the  use  of  all  ten  fingers.  They  will  not 
thereby  secure  ten  times  as  much  enjoyment, 
but  their  families  will  thank  them. 


Immorality  of  Shop-windows 

AT  THE  heart  of  morality  lies  content.  That  is 
a  statement  either  optimistic  or  cynical,  as  you 
choose  to  look  at  it;  but  it  is  a  statement  of  fad:. 
Even  the  reformer  seeks  to  allay  his  discontent, 
which  does  not  arise  from  the  morality  in  him, 
but  from  the  immorality  in  other  people.  Any 
body  who  has  lived  with  a  reformer  knows  this. 
Therefore  are  modern  shop-windows — by  steel 
construction  made  to  occupy  the  maximum 
amount  of  space,  to  assault  by  breadth  and  bril 
liance  the  most  callous  eye — one  of  the  most 
immoral  forces  in  modern  city  life. 

This  is  especially  true  of  the  shop-windows  on 
Fifth  Avenue,  New  York.  For  these  windows, 
even  at  night  illuminated  like  silent  drawing- 
rooms  vacant  of  people,  expose  to  the  view  of 
the  most  humble  passer  on  the  curb  as  well  as 
to  the  pampered  rich  racing  by  in  motors,  the 
spoils  of  all  the  world.  Here  are  paintings  by 
the  old  masters  and  the  new;  rare  furniture  and 
marbles  from  Italian  palaces;  screens  from  Japan; 
jewels  and  rugs  from  the  Orient;  silk  stockings, 
curios,  china,  bronzes,  hats,  furs;  and  again  more 


The  Immorality  of  Shop-windows  47 

curios,  cabinets,  statues,  paintings;  things  rare 
and  beautiful  and  exotic  from  every  quarter  of 
the  globe,  "from  silken  Samarcand  to  cedared 
Lebanon/'  And  they  are  not  collections,  they 
are  not  the  treasures  of  some  proud  house,  al 
though  they  might  have  been  once;  they  are 
for  sale;  they  may  be  bought  by  anybody — who 
has  the  price. 

But  who  has  the  price?  That  stout  woman 
riding  by  in  her  limousine,  with  a  Pomeranian 
on  her  lap  instead  of  a  baby?  That  fifteen-dol- 
lar-a-week  chorus-girl  in  a  cab,  half  buried 
under  a  two-thousand-dollar  chinchilla  coat? 
That  elderly  man  who  hobbles  goutily  out  of 
his  club  and  walks  a  few  short  blocks  to  his 
house  on  Murray  Hill,  "for  exercise "?  Assur 
edly,  somebody  has  the  price,  for  the  shops  are 
ever  open,  the  allurement  of  their  windows 
never  less.  But  not  you,  who  gaze  hungry-eyed 
at  these  beautiful  objects,  and  then  go  to  a  Sixth 
Avenue  department  store  and  wonder  if  you  can 
afford  that  Persian  rug  made  in  Harlem,  marked 
down  from  $50  to  $48.87;  or  that  colonial  ma 
hogany  bookcase  glistening  with  brand  new 
varnish.  Envy  gnaws  at  your  heart.  And  yet 
you  had  supposed  that  yours  was  a  comfortable 
sort  of  income — maybe  four  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  Your  father,  on  that  income,  back  in  a 
New  England  suburb,  was  counted  quite  a  man 
in  the  community,  and  you  put  on  airs.  He  se- 


48  The  Immorality  of  Shop-windows 

levied  the  new  minister,  and  you  set  the  style 
in  socks.  But  now  you  are  humiliated,  embit 
tered.  You  rave  against  predatory  wealth.  Thus 
shop-windows  do  make  Socialists  of  us  all. 

Nor  are  you  able  to  accept  the  shop-windows 
educationally,  recalling  that  when  you  went  to 
Europe  you  saw  nothing  that  had  not  already 
stared  at  you  through  plate-glass  on  Fifth  Ave 
nue — for  sale.  Who  wants  to  view  one  of  the 
chairs  that  a  Medici  sat  in,  only  to  recall  that 
months  before  he  saw  its  mate  in  a  shop-window 
at  the  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue  and  Fifty-first 
Street;  or  to  contemplate  a  pious  yellow  heathen 
bowed  down  before  the  image  of  Buddha,  while 
the  tinkly  temple  bells  are  tinkling,  only  to 
have  rise  in  his  mind  the  memory  of  a  much 
larger  and  more  venerable  Buddha  which  used 
to  smile  out  inscrutably  at  the  crossing  of 
Twenty-ninth  Street,  below  a  much  sweeter 
string  of  tinkly  temple  bells? 

We've  a  bigger,  better  Buddha  in  a  cleaner  (!), 

greener  (!!)  land, 
Many  miles  from  Mandalay. 

There  is  no  romance  in  an  antique,  be  it  god  or 
chair  or  China  plate,  when  it  is  exposed  for  sale 
in  a  shop-window.  And  there  is  no  romance  in 
it  amid  its  native  surroundings  when  you  realize 
that  any  day  it  may  be  carried  off  and  so  ex 
posed.  Thus  do  shop-windows  destroy  romance. 


The  Immorality  of  Shop-windows  49 

But  in  the  humbler  windows  off  the  Avenue 
there  is  an  equal,  if  grosser,  element  of  immoral 
ity.  For  these  are  the  windows  where  price-tags 
are  displayed.  The  tag  has  always  two  prices,  the 
higher  marked  through  with  red  ink,  the  lower, 
for  this  very  reason,  calling  with  a  siren  voice. 
The  price  crossed  off  is  always  just  beyond  your 
means,  the  other  just  within  it.  "Ah,"  you  think, 
swallowing  the  deception  with  only  too  great 
willingness,  "what  a  bargain!  It  may  never  come 
again!"  And  you  enter  the  fatal  door. 

Perhaps  you  struggle  first.  "Don't  buy  it," 
says  the  inhibition  of  prudence.  "You  have 
more  neckties  now  than  you  can  wear." 

"But  it's  so  cheap,"  says  impulse,  with  the 
usual  sophistry. 

And  you,  poor  victim  that  you  are,  tugged  on 
and  back  by  warring  factions  in  your  brain, — 
poor  refutation  of  the  silly  old  theological  super 
stitions  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  free  will, — 
vacillate  on  the  sidewalk  till  the  battle  is  over, 
till  your  mythical  free  will  is  down  in  the  dust. 
Thus  do  shop-windows  overthrow  theology. 

Then  you  enter  that  shop,  and  ask  for  the 
tie.  Or  perhaps  it  is  something  else,  and  they 
haven't  your  size.  You  ought  to  feel  glad,  re 
lieved.  Do  you?  You  do  not!  You  are  angry. 
You  feel  as  if  you  had  lost  just  so  much  money, 
when  in  reality  you  have  saved  it.  Thus  do 
shop-windows  destroy  logic. 


50  The  Immorality  of  Shop-windows 

This  has  been  a  particularly  perilous  season 
for  the  man  with  a  passion  for  shirts.  By  some 
diabolic  agreement,  all  the  haberdashers  at  one 
and  the  same  time  filled  their  windows  with 
luscious  lavenders  and  faint  green  stripes  and  soft 
silk  shirts  with  comfortable  French  cuffs,  and 
marking  out  $2.00  or  $3.00,  as  the  case  might 
be,  wrote  $1.50  or  $2.50  below.  The  song  of 
the  shirt  was  loud  in  the  land,  its  haunting 
melody  not  to  be  resisted.  Is  there  any  lure  for 
a  woman  in  all  the  fluffy  mystery  of  a  January 
"white  sale"  comparable  to  the  seduction  for  a 
man  of  a  lavender  shirt  marked  down  from 
$2.00  to  $1,50?  I  doubt  it.  Heaven  help  the 
woman  if  there  is!  So  the  unused  stock  in 
trunk  or  bureau  drawer  accumulates,  and  the 
weekly  reward  for  patient  toil  at  an  office  drib 
bles  away,  and  the  savings-bank  is  no  richer  for 
your  deposit — and  the  shop-windows  flare  as 
shamelessly  as  ever.  There  is  only  one  satisfaction. 
The  man  who  sells  shirts  always  has  a  passion  for 
jewelry.  And  that  keeps  him  poor,  too! 


^A  Forgotten  ^American 

I  HAVE  written  the  title,  "A  forgotten  Ameri 
can  poet,"  and  I  shall  let  it  stand,  though  I  am 
not  sure  that  he  was  ever  well  enough  known 
to  be  spoken  of  now  as  forgotten.  Ten  or  a 
dozen  years  ago  a  friend  of  mine  who  was 
working  on  an  anthology  of  American  poetry, 
at  the  John  Carter  Brown  library  in  Providence, 
wrote  to  me  with  great  enthusiasm  of  a  poet  he 
had  "discovered,"  and  of  whom  he  had  never 
heard  before.  "His  name  is  Frederick  Goddard 
Tuckerman,"  my  friend  said,  "and  you  will  not 
find  him  in  Stedman's  anthology,  though  it 
seems  incredible  that  Stedman  left  out  anybody 
or  anything.  Get  a  copy  of  his  poems  if  you 
can — Ticknor  and  Fields,  1860." 

I  sent  in  my  order  for  the  book,  to  Good- 
speed's,  and  then  forgot  the  incident.  But  Good- 
speed  didn't.  A  year  later  the  book  came.  Evi 
dently  it  is  an  infrequent  item  at  the  auctions. 
The  copy  I  received  was  a  second  edition,  dated 
1864  (which  seems  to  indicate  the  poems  had 
found  some  readers),  but  still  in  the  familiar 
brown  of  Ticknor  and  Fields,  matching  my 


52  <iA  Forgotten  ^American 

first  American  editions  of  The  ^4ngel  in  the 
House.  This  copy  was  of  special  interest  be 
cause  it  was  a  presentation  copy  from  the  author 
to  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.  The  leaves  had  been 
opened,  but  if  Mrs.  Stowe  read,  she  had  made 
no  marginal  comments.  The  only  addition  to 
the  book  was  an  old  newspaper  clipping  pasted 
in  the  back — a  condensed  history  of  the  Beecher 
family !  I  read  the  volume  myself  with  increas 
ing  interest  and  enthusiasm,  and  at  the  close  I 
desired  to  learn  more  of  Frederick  Goddard 
Tuckerman,  not  of  the  Beechers.  Mr.  Sted- 
man's  complete  omission  of  these  poems  could 
only  have  been  explained,  I  felt,  by  an  equally 
complete  ignorance  of  their  existence.  Com 
pared  to  the  poems  of  Henry  T.  Tuckerman, 
included  by  Stedman,  the  verses  of  his  unknown 
cousin  were  as  gold  to  copper.  Why,  I  won 
dered,  had  this  man  been  so  completely  ob 
literated  by  Time,  or  why  had  he  failed  in  his 
life  to  reach  a  niche  where  Time  could  not 
utterly  efface  him? 

I  wrote  to  Colonel  Thomas  Wentworh  Hig- 
ginson,  who,  I  discovered,  had  been  a  classmate 
of  Tuckerman's  at  Harvard,  and  who  of  course 
knew  practically  everybody  of  consequence  in 
the  literary  world  of  his  generation.  Colonel 
Higginson  was  able  to  supply  some  data,  but 
not  much.  Tuckerman  was  born  in  1821,  of  a 
rather  well-known  Boston  family.  Joseph  Tuck- 


Forgotten  ^American  'Poet  5  3 

erman,  philanthropist  and  early  Unitarian  clergy 
man,  was  his  uncle.  He  was  a  younger  brother 
of  Edward  Tuckerman,  long  famous  as  a  pro 
fessor  of  botany  at  Amherst  College,  and  who 
gave  his  name  to  Tuckerman's  Ravine  on  Mount 
Washington.  Frederick  Goddard  Tuckerman 
entered  Harvard  with  the  class  of  1841,  but 
remained  only  a  year,  passing  over  to  the  Law 
School  a  little  later  where  he  secured  his  LL.B. 
in  1842,  and  for  a  period  evidently  practised 
law  in  Boston.  "I  remember  he  came  back 
among  us  at  some  kind  of  gathering  during  our 
college  course,"  Colonel  Higginson  wrote,  "and 
seemed  very  friendly  and  cordial  to  all.  I  re 
member  him  as  a  refined  and  gentlemanly  fel 
low,  but  did  not  then  know  him  as  a  poet.  I  see 
him  put  down  as  a  lawyer  in  Boston  (in  Adams's 
T&tiionary  of  American  Authors},  but  I  have  no 
recolle&ion  of  that  facl." 

It  was  not  until  I  had  written  and  published 
in  the  Forum  magazine  a  little  appreciation  of 
his  poetry  that  I  learned  from  his  son,  now  a 
resident  of  Amherst,  Massachusetts,  that  Fred 
erick  Tuckerman,  even  as  his  verses  seemed  to 
imply,  early  moved  away  from  cities  to  the 
beautiful  valley  under  the  shadow  of  the  Hoi- 
yoke  Range,  and  there  passed  his  days,  evidently 
the  world  forgetting,  and  by  the  world  forgot. 
He  issued  his  single  volume  of  poems  in  1860, 
when  he  was  thirty-nine,  just  before  the  out- 


54  ^  Forgotten  ^American 

break  of  the  Civil  War,  but  no  shadow  of  that 
coming  contest  crosses  their  pages,  as  it  crossed 
the  pages  of  Whittier  and  Emerson,  or  as  it 
affedted  the  a&ive  life  of  his  classmate  Colonel 
Higginson.  The  second  edition,  in  1864,  was 
still  unaffedted  by  the  great  struggle.  He  pro 
duced  his  slender  sheaf  of  poems  amid  the  fields, 
in  quiet  introspection,  and  he  might  well  be 
accused  of  a  species  of  Pharisaism,  were  these 
poems  not  so  artlessly  and  passionately  sincere, 
and  often  so  tinged  with  religious  awe.  His 
withdrawal,  in  his  verse,  from  the  life  of  his 
times  was  the  a6t  of  a  natural  recluse. 

At  the  time  Tuckerman's  poems  were  issued, 
it  is  interesting  to  consider  briefly  some  of  the 
poetic  influences  which  affected  the  public. 
The  two  best-selling  poets  just  then,  even  in 
America,  were  Tennyson  and  Coventry  Pat- 
more,  the  latter  represented,  of  course,  by  The 
Angel  in  the  House.  Indeed,  the  poems  of  these 
two  sold  better  than  novels!  Whitman  was 
hardly  yet  an  influence.  Julia  Ward  Howe  had 
written,  and  Booth  had  accepted,  a  drama  in 
blank  verse.  Our  minor  poets  still  wrote  in  the 
style  of  Pope,  and  the  narrative  shared  honors 
with  the  moral  platitude  in  popular  regard. 
Tennyson,  of  course,  was  a  great  poet,  and 
Patmore  no  mean  one,  even  at  that  time,  but 
it  is  questionable  whether  the  huge  popular  suc 
cess  of  their  works,  such  as  The  'Princess  and 


Forgotten  ^American  *Poet  55 

The  tAngel  in  the  House,  was  due  to  their 
stridtly  poetic  merits.  At  any  rate,  the  poetry 
of  Frederick  Goddard  Tuckerman,  lacking  nar 
rative  interest,  palatable  platitudes,  lyric  lilt,  but 
being,  rather,  contemplative,  aloof,  delicately 
minor  and  in  many  ways  curiously  modern, 
must  have  fallen  on  ears  not  attuned  to  it.  He 
had  none  of  the  Bolshevik  revolutionary  vitality 
of  Whitman,  to  thrive  and  grow  by  the  opposi 
tion  he  created.  He  could  have  aroused  no  oppo 
sition.  It  would  have  been  his  happy  fate  to 
find  men  and  women  who  could  appreciate  his 
delicate  observation  of  nature,  his  golden  bursts 
of  imaginative  vigor,  his  wistful,  contemplative 
melancholy,  his  disregard  of  academic  form  less 
because  it  hampered  him  than  because  he  was 
careless  of  anything  but  the  exact  image.  Such 
readers  it  was  apparently  not  his  fate  to  find  in 
sufficient  numbers  to  bring  him  fame.  He  was, 
in  a  sense,  a  modern  before  his  time,  but  with 
out  sufficient  consciousness  of  his  modernity  to 
fight.  He  was  a  mute,  inglorious  Robert  Frost — 
like  Frost  for  one  year  a  Harvard  student,  like  him 
retiring  to  the  New  England  countryside,  like 
him  intent  chiefly  on  rendering  the  common 
place  beauty  of  that  countryside  into  something 
magical  because  so  true.  Only  he  lacked  Frost's 
dramatic  sense,  and  interest  in  human  problems. 
Tuckerman's  favorite  medium  was  the  sonnet; 
but  a  sonnet  to  him  was  a  thing  of  fourteen  five- 


56  ^4  Forgotten  ^American 

foot  iambic  lines,  and  there  all  rules  ended. 
Sometimes  he  even  crowded  six  feet  into  a  line. 
It  is  possible  his  laxness  of  form  was  due  to  igno 
rance,  but  more  likely  that  it  was  due  to  a  greater 
interest  in  his  mood  than  in  the  "rules"  of  poetry. 
Many  of  his  sonnets  were  in  sequence,  one  flow 
ing  into  the  next.  Here  are  two,  thus  unified, 
which  show  in  flashes  his  sweep  of  imaginative 
phrase,  and  his  transcendental  bent: 

The  starry  flower,  the  flower-like  stars  that  fade 
And  brighten  with  the  daylight  and  the  dark — 
The  bluet  in  the  green  I  faintly  mark, 
The  glimmering  crags  with  laurel  overlaid, 
Even  to  the  Lord  of  light,  the  Lamp  of  shade, 
Shine  one  to  me — the  least,  still  glorious  made 
As  crowned  moon  or  heaven's  great  hierarch. 
And  so,  dim  grassy  flower  and  night-lit  spark, 
Still  move  me  on  and  upward  for  the  True; 
Seeking  through  change,  growth,  death,  in  new  and  old 
The  full  in  few,  the  statelier  in  the  less, 
With  patient  pain;  always  remembering  this — 
His  hand,  who  touched  the  sod  with  showers  of  gold, 
Stippled  Orion  on  the  midnight  blue. 

And  so,  as  this  great  sphere  (now  turning  slow 

Up  to  the  light  from  that  abyss  of  stars, 

Now  wheeling  into  gloom  through  sunset  bars) 

With  all  its  elements  of  form  and  flow, 

And  life  in  life,  where  crown' d  yet  blind  must  go 

The  sensible  king — is  but  a  Unity 

Compressed  of  motes  impossible  to  know; 

Which  worldlike  yet  in  deep  analogy 

Have  distance,  march,  dimension  and  degree; 


Forgotten  ^American  "Poet  57 

So  the  round  earth — which  we  the  world  do  call — 
Is  but  a  grain  in  that  which  mightiest  swells, 
Whereof  the  stars  of  light  are  particles, 
As  ultimate  atoms  of  one  infinite  Ball 
On  which  God  moves,  and  treads  beneath  His  feet 
the  All ! 

Turning  the  page  we  come  on  a  poem  called 
The  Question.  "How  shall  I  array  my  love?" 
he  asks,  and  ranges  the  earth  for  costly  jewels 
and  silks  from  Samarcand;  but  because  his  love 
is  a  simple  New  England  maid,  he  rejefts  them 
all  as  unworthy  and  inappropriate,  and  closing 

sings : 

The  river-riches  of  the  sphere, 

All  that  the  dark  sea-bottoms  bear, 

The  wide  earth's  green  convexity, 

The  inexhaustible  blue  sky, 

Hold  not  a  prize  so  proud,  so  high, 

That  it  could  grace  her,  gay  or  grand, 

By  garden-gale  and  rose-breath  fanned; 

Or  as  to-night  I  saw  her  stand, 

Lovely  in  the  meadow  land, 

With  a  clover  in  her  hand. 

Have  not  these  lines  a  magic  simplicity  ?  It  seems 
so  to  me.  They  flow  rippling  and  bright  to  the 
inevitable  finish,  and  there  is  no  more  to  say. 

Tuckerman's  power  of  close  yet  magical  ob 
servation,  used  not  so  much  in  the  Tennysonian 
way  (for  Tennyson  was  a  close  observer,  make 
no  mistake  about  that)  as  in  what  we  now  think 
of  as  the  modern  way,  that  is,  as  a  part  of  the 


58  *A  Forgotten  ^American  "Poet 

realistic  record  of  homely  events,  with  beauty 
only  as  a  by-produdr,,  is  well  illustrated  in  the 
opening  lines  of  a  narrative  poem  called  The 
School  Girl,  a  New  England  Idyll.  Here  again 
a  kinship  with  Frost  is  seen,  rather  than  with 
Tuckerman's  contemporaries: 

The  wind,  that  all  the  day  had  scarcely  clashed 
The  cornstalks  in  the  sun,  as  the  sun  sank 
Came  rolling  up  the  valley  like  a  wave, 
Broke  in  the  beech  and  washed  among  the  pine, 
And  ebbed  to  silence;  but  at  the  welcome  sound  — 
Leaving  my  lazy  book  without  a  mark, 
In  hopes  to  lose  among  the  blowing  fern 
The  dregs  of  headache  brought  from  yesternight, 
And  stepping  lightly  lest  the  children  hear — 
I  from  a  side  door  slipped,  and  crossed  a  lane 
With  bitter  Mayweed  lined,  [and  over  a  field 
Snapping  with  grasshoppers,  until  I  came 
Down  where  an  interrupted  brook  held  way 
Among  the  alders.    There,  on  a  strutting  branch 
Leaving  my  straw,  I  sat  and  wooed  the  west, 
With  breast  and  palms  outspread  as  to  a  fire. 

These  powers  of  observation  are  again  illus 
trated  in  a  poem  of  quite  different  import,  called 
<3xCargitesy  a  lyric  of  thirteen  stanzas,  some  of 
which  are  inexcusably  crude.  It  begins: 

I  neither  plow  the  field  nor  sow, 

Nor  hold  the  spade  nor  drive  the  cart, 

Nor  spread  the  heap,  nor  hill  nor  hoe, 
To  keep  the  barren  land  in  heart. 


Forgotten  ^American  'Poet  59 

After  four  more  stanzas  in  similar  vein,  comes 
this  bit  of  magic  word-painting,  so  instindt  with 
our  New  England  Autumn,  yet  so  entirely  the 
work  of  a  realist,  with  his  eye  on  the  objedt: 

But,  leaning  from  my  window,  chief 
I  mark  the  Autumn's  mellow  signs  — 

The  frosty  air,  the  yellow  leaf, 
The  ladder  leaning  on  the  vines. 

The  maple  from  his  brood  of  boughs 
Puts  northward  out  a  reddening  limb; 

The  mist  draws  faintly  round  the  house; 
And  all  the  headland  heights  are  dim. 

The  poem  then  continues  to  its  close: 

And  yet  it  is  the  same  as  when 

I  looked  across  the  chestnut  woods, 

And  saw  the  barren  landscape  then 
O'er  the  red  bunch  of  lilac  buds; 

And  all  things  seem  the  same.   'Tis  one 

To  lie  in  sleep,  or  toil  as  they 
Who  rise  beforetime  with  the  sun, 

And  so  keep  footstep  with  their  day; 

For  aimless  oaf  and  wiser  fool 

Work  to  one  end  by  differing  deeds; — 

The  weeds  rot  in  the  standing  pool; 
The  water  stagnates  in  the  weeds; 

And  all  by  waste  or  warfare  falls, 

Has  gone  to  wreck,  or  crumbling  goes, 

Since  Nero  planned  his  golden  walls, 
Or  the  Cham  Cublai  built  his  house. 


60  *A  Forgotten  ^American  "Poet 

But  naught  I  reck  of  change  and  fray; 

Watching  the  clouds  at  morning  driven, 
The  still  declension  of  the  day; 

And,  when  the  moon  is  just  in  heaven, 

I  walk,  unknowing  where  or  why; 

Or  idly  lie  beneath  the  pine, 
And  bite  the  dry  brown  threads,  and  lie 

And  think  a  life  well  lost  is  mine. 

"A  life  well  lost"!  The  phrase  is  perhaps 
pathetically  revealing — and  prophetic.  Or  are 
we  stretching  the  poet's  ambitions  to  be  known 
as  a  poet?  That  he  published  what  he  wrote 
indicates  a  normal  desire  for  recognition,  yet  it 
can  hardly  be  doubted,  either,  that  he  was  an 
amateur  in  verse,  whose  life  was  rather  centred 
in  his  contemplative,  retiring  existence  among 
the  fields  and  hills  of  Amherst.  There  may 
even  seem  to  some  a  delicate  Pharisaism  about 
this  sonnet,  a  Pharisaism  removed  from  the  ro 
bustness  of  Thoreau,  who  would  certainly  have 
argued  the  point  with  the  farmer: 

"That  boy,"  the  farmer  said,  with  hazel  wand 
Pointing  him  out,  half  by  the  haycock  hid, 

"Though  bare  sixteen  can  work  at  what  he's  bid 
From  sun  till  set,  to  cradle,  reap  or  band." 
I  heard  the  words,  but  scarce  could  understand 
Whether  they  claimed  a  smile  or  gave  me  pain; 
Or  was  it  aught  to  me,  in  that  green  lane, 
That  all  day  yesterday,  the  briers  amid, 
He  held  the  plough  against  the  jarring  land 
Steady,  or  kept  his  place  among  the  mowers; 


Forgotten  ^American  'Poet  6 1 

Whilst  other  fingers,  sweeping  for  the  flowers, 
Brought  from  the  forest  back  a  crimson  stain? 
Was  it  a  thorn  that  touched  the  flesh?  or  did 
The  poke-berry  spit  purple  on  my  hand  ? 

Yet,  as  we  have  said,  Tuckerman  was  far  from 
Pharisaism  of  any  sort,  either  of  the  aesthete  or 
nature-lover.  His  mind  was  too  genuinely  occu 
pied  with  spiritual  problems.  Take,  for  exam 
ple,  this  closing  sonnet  in  a  sequence  depicting 
the  discords  of  Nature: 

Not  the  round  natural  word,  not  the  deep  mind, 
The  reconcilement  holds:  the  blue  abyss 
Collects  it  not;  our  arrows  sink  amiss; 
And  but  in  Him  may  we  our  import  find. 
The  agony  to  know,  the  grief,  the  bliss 
Of  toil,  is  vain  and  vain !  clots  of  the  sod 
Gathered  in  heat  and  haste,  and  flung  behind, 
To  blind  ourselves  and  others — what  but  this, 
Still  grasping  dust  and  sowing  toward  the  wind? 
No  more  thy  meaning  seek,  thine  anguish  plead; 
But  leaving  straining  thought  and  stammering  word 
Across  the  barren  azure  pass  to  God; 
Shooting  the  void  in  silence,  like  a  bird — 
A  bird  that  shuts  his  wings  for  better  speed! 

Here,  surely,  is  poetry  that  would  not  seem  the 
least  among  the  myriad  hosts  in  Mr.  Stedman's 
hospitable  anthology!  The  rhyme  scheme  may 
be  quite  unorthodox,  but  the  poet's  lips  have 
been  touched  by  a  coal  from  the  high  altar, 
none  the  less. 

The  volume  closes  with  a  sonnet  sequence 
which  is  poignantly  intimate;  almost  it  is  a 


62  zA  Forgotten  ^American  "Poet 

diary  of  the  poet's  grief  for  the  loss  of  the 
woman  he  loved,  and  in  its  stabbing  intensity 
holds  a  hint  of  such  poems  as  Patmore's  The 
Azalea.  Here  is  one: 

Again,  again,  ye  part  in  stormy  grief 
From  these  bare  hills  and  bowers  so  built  in  vain, 
And  lips  and  hearts  that  will  not  move  again — 
Pathetic  Autumn  and  the  writhled  leaf; 
Dropping  away  in  tears  with  warning  brief: 
The  wind  reiterates  a  wailful  strain, 
And  on  the  skylight  beats  the  restless  rain, 
And  vapour  drowns  the  mountain,  base  and  brow. 
I  watch  the  wet  black  roofs  through  mist  defined, 
I  watch  the  raindrops  strung  along  the  blind, 
And  my  heart  bleeds,  and  all  my  senses  bow 
In  grief;  as  one  mild  face,  with  suffering  lined, 
Comes  up  in  thought :  oh,  wildly,  rain  and  wind, 
Mourn  on!  she  sleeps,  nor  heeds  your  angry 
sorrow  now. 

Such  use  of  pi&orial  observation  as  "the  rain 
drops  strung  along  the  blind/'  and  "the  wet 
black  roofs  through  mist  defined/'  is  something 
you  will  look  for  in  vain  through  the  pages  of 
Longfellow,  for  instance.  This  is  the  sonnet  of 
a  realist.  So,  also,  is  this  one,  which  does  not 
seem  to  me  to  deserve  oblivion,  and  certainly  so 
long  as  my  memory  retains  its  power  will  have 
that  little  span  of  immortality: 

My  Anna!  when  for  thee  my  head  was  bowed, 
The  circle  of  the  world,  sky,  mountain,  main, 
Drew  inward  to  one  spot;  and  now  again 


Forgotten  ^American  "Poef  63 

Wide  Nature  narrows  to  the  shell  and  shroud. 
In  the  late  dawn  they  will  not  be  forgot, 
And  evenings  early  dark;  when  the  low  rain 
Begins  at  nightfall,  though  no  tempest  rave, 
I  know  the  rain  is  falling  on  her  grave; 
The  morning  views  it,  and  the  sunset  cloud 
Points  with  a  finger  to  that  lonely  spot; 
The  crops,  that  up  the  valley  rolling  go, 
Ever  toward  her  slumber  bow  and  blow! 
I  look  on  the  sweeping  corn  and  the  surging  rye, 
And  with  every  gust  of  wind  my  heart  goes  by! 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  predominant 
note  in  Tuckerman's  poetry  is  elegiac;  rather  is 
it  a  note  of  tender,  wistful,  and  scrupulously 
accurate  contemplation  of  the  New  England 
countryside,  mingled  with  spiritual  speculation. 
But  as  the  volume  closed  with  the  elegiac 
poems,  and  as  thereafter  no  more  poems  were 
published,  it  may  be  surmised  that  the  poet's 
will  to  create  was  smothered  in  the  poignant 
ripple  of  his  personal  sorrow.  Had  it  not  been, 
and  had  his  pen  continued  to  write,  one  cannot 
help  wondering  how  much  closer  he  would 
have  come  to  the  modern  note  in  poetry.  That 
he  already  felt  a  tendency  to  progress  from  the 
old  metres  to  freer  forms  is  constantly  apparent; 
and  this  tendency,  combined  with  his  uncon 
sciously  scrupulous  realism,  might  well  have 
brought  him  near  to  the  present.  I  should  like 
to  close  this  little  paper  to  his  memory  with 
one  of  his  lyrics  which  throws  over  rhyme  alto- 


64  *A  Forgotten  ^American 

gether,  and  stridlly  formal  metre,  also,  though 
the  fetters  are  still  there.  It  is  the  stab  of  grief 
which  comes  through  to  haunt  you,  the  bare 
simplicity  and  the  woe.  Obje&ive  it  certainly 
is  not,  as  the  modernists  maintain  they  are.  Yet 
the  personal  note  will  always  be  modern,  for  it 
has  no  age.  This  lyric  belongs  to  you  and  me  to 
day,  not  in  the  pages  of  a  forgotten  book,  on  the 
shelves  of  a  dusty  library.  I  would  that  some 
of  our  vers  libre  practitioners  could  equal  it: 

I  took  from  its  glass  a  flower, 
To  lay  on  her  grave  with  dull,  accusing  tears; 
But  the  heart  of  the  flower  fell  out  as  I  handled  the  rose, 
And  my  heart  is; shattered  and  soon  will  wither  away. 

I  watch  the  changing  shadows, 
And  the  patch  of  windy  sunshine  upon  the  hill, 
And  the  long  blue  woods;  and  a  grief  no  tongue  can  tell 
Breaks  at  my  eyes  in  drops  of  bitter  rain. 

I  hear  her  baby  wagon, 
And  the  little  wheels  go  over  my  heart: 
Oh!  when  will  the  light  of  the  darkened  house  return? 
Oh!  when  will  she  come  who  made  the  hills  so  fair? 

I  sit  by  the  parlor  window, 

When  twilight  deepens  and  winds  grow  cold  without; 
But  the  blessed  feet  no  more  come  up  the  walk, 
And  my  little  girl  and  I  cry  softly  together. 


New  "Poetry  and  the  J^ingering  J^jne 

I  HAVE  one  grave  objection  to  the  "new  poetry" — 
I  cannot  remember  it.  Some,  to  be  sure,  would 
say  that  is  no  objection  at  all,  but  I  am  not  of 
the  number.  It  would  hardly  become  me,  in 
fa6t,  since  I  have,  in  a  minor  pipe,  committed 
"new  poetry"  myself  on  various  and  sundry  oc 
casions,  or  what  I  presume  it  to  be,  particularly 
when  I  didn't  have  time  to  write  in  rhyme  or 
even  metre.  The  new  poets  may  objed:  all  they 
like,  but  it  is  easier  to  put  your  thought  (when 
you  happen  to  have  one)  into  rhythm  than  into 
rhyme  and  metre.  If,  indeed,  as  the  vers  libre 
practitioners  insist,  each  idea  comes  clothed  in 
its  own  inevitable  rhythm,  there  can  be  very 
little  trouble  about  the  matter.  The  poem 
composes  itself,  and  your  chief  task  will  be  with 
the  printer!  I  don't  say  the  rhythmic  irregular 
ity  is  not,  perhaps,  more  suitable  for  certain  ef- 
fefts,  or  at  any  rate  that  it  cannot  achieve  effects 
of  its  own;  I  certainly  don't  say  that  it  isn't 
poetry  because  it  does  not  trip  to  formal  meas 
ure.  Poetry  resides  in  deeper  matters  than  this. 
I  recall  Ibsen's  remark  when  told  that  the 


66         New  "Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line 

reviewers  declared  "Peer  (jynt  wasn't  poetry. 
"Very  well,"  said  he,  "it  will  be."  Since  it 
now  indubitably  is,  one  is  cautious  about  ques 
tioning  the  work  of  the  present,  such  work  as 
Miss  Lowell's,  for  instance.  Of  course  the  mere 
chopping  up  of  unrhythmic  prose  into  capital 
ized  lines  without  glow,  without  emotion,  is 
not  poetry,  any  more  than  the  blank  verse  of 
the  second-rate  nineteenth-century  "poetic 
drama,"  which  old  Joe  Crowell,  comedian,  de 
scribed  as  "good,  honest  prose  set  up  hind-side 
foremost."  We  may  eliminate  that  from  the 
discussion  once  and  for  all.  But  the  genuine 
new  poets,  who  know  what  they  are  about,  and 
doubtless  why  they  are  about  it,  I  regard  with 
all  deference,  hailing  especially  their  good  fight 
to  free  poetry  of  its  ancient  inversions,  its  minc 
ing  vocabulary,  its  thous  and  thees,  its  bosky 
dells  and  purling  streams,  its  affe&ations  and  un 
realities,  both  of  speech  and  subject.  But  I  do 
say  they  miss  a  certain  triumphant  craftsman's 
joy  at  packing  precisely  what  you  mean,  hard 
enough  to  express  in  unlimited  prose,  into  a 
fettered,  singing  line;  and  I  do  say  that  I  can't 
remember  what  they  write. 

At  least,  nobody  can  dispute  this  latter  state 
ment.  He  may  declare  it  the  fault  of  my  mem 
ory,  which  has  been  habituated  to  retain  only 
such  lines  as  have  rhyme  and  metre  to  help  it 
out.  But  I  hardly  think  his  retort  adequate, 


New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line         67 

because,  in  the  first  place,  the  memory  is  much 
less  amenable  to  training  and  much  more  a 
matter  of  fixed  capacity  and  acliion  than  certain 
advertisements  in  the  popular  magazines  would 
have  the  "twenty-dollar-a-week  man"  believe, 
and  in  the  second  place,  because  my  case,  \  find, 
is  the  case  of  almost  everybody  with  whom  I 
have  talked  on  the  subject.  The  solution,  I  be 
lieve,  is  perfectly  simple.  Nearly  anyone  can 
remember  a  tune;  even  I  can,  within  limits. 
At  least,  I  can  do  better  than  Tennyson,  who 
could  recognize,  he  said,  two  tunes;  one  was 
"God  Save  the  Queen"  and  the  other  wasn't. 
But  when  music  is  broken  into  independent 
rhythms,  irregular  and  oddly  related  phrases,  it  is 
only  the  person  exceptionally  endowed  who  can 
remember  it  without  prolonged  study.  The  very 
first  audience  who  heard  Rigoletto  came  away 
humming  "Donna  e  mobile."  And  the  very  last 
audience  who  heard  Pelleas  et  Melisande  came 
away  humming — "Donna  e  mobile."  It  is  the 
law.  Needless  to  say,  I  enjoyed  Pelleas  et  Meli 
sande,  but  I  cannot  whistle  it.  What  I  recall  is  a 
mood,  a  pidture,  a  vague  ecstasy,  a  hushed  terror. 
It  was  James  Huneker,  was  it  not,  who,  when 
asked  what  he  thought  of  the  opera,  replied  that 
Mary  Garden's  hair  was  superb. 

"But  the  music?"  he  was  urged. 

"Oh,  the  music,"  said  he,  " — the  music  didn't 
bother  me." 


68         New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line 

But  the  new  poetry  does  bother  me,  because 
I  strive  to  remember  not  the  mere  mood  or 
pidture  of  the  poem,  but  the  adhial  words  which 
created  them,  and  I  cannot.  I  want  to  compel 
again,  at  will,  the  actual  poetic  experience,  and 
I  cannot,  without  carrying  a  library  in  my 
pocket.  The  words  hover,  sometimes,  just  be 
yond  the  threshold  of  my  brain,  like  a  forgotten 
name  ("If  you  hadn't  asked  me,  I  could  have 
told  you" — you  know  the  sensation);  but  they 
never  come.  I  have  no  comfort  of  them  in  the 
still  hours  of  the  day  when  I  would  be  whisper 
ing  them  to  myself.  Instead,  I  have  to  fall  back 
upon  the  old-fashioned  Golden  Treasury.  I  can 
not  remember  a  single  line  that  Amy  Lowell  has 
written  about  her  Roxbury  garden,  but  I  shall 
never  forget  what  Wordsworth  said  about  that 
field  of  gold  he  passed;  I  repeat  his  lines,  and 
then  my  heart,  too,  with  pleasure  fills  and  dances 
with  his  daffodils. 

It  is  an  immemorial  delight,  this  pleasure  in 
the  lingering  line,  in  the  haunting  couplet,  in 
the  quatrain  that  will  not  let  you  forget.  By 
sacrificing  it,  the  new  poetry  has  sacrificed  some 
thing  precious,  something  that  a  common  in 
stinct  of  mankind  demands  of  the  minstrel.  It 
will  not  suffice  for  the  new  poets  to  deny  that 
they  are  minstrels,  to  assert  that  they  write  for 
the  eye,  not  speak  for  the  ear,  that  it  is  not 
their  mission  to  emit  pretty  sounds  but  so  to  pre- 


New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line        69 

sent  their  vision  of  the  world  that  it  shall  etch 
itself  on  men's  minds  with  the  bite  of  reality. 
Such  a  creed  is  admirable,  but  defective.  It  is 
defective  because,  in  the  first  place,  if  the  new 
poets  did  not  write  for  the  ear  quite  as  much  as 
the  old  poets,  there  would  be  no  excuse  even 
for  rhythm.  Any  reader  who  is  sensitive  enough 
to  care  to  read  poetry  is  sensitive  enough  to  hear 
it  with  his  inward  ear  even  as  he  sees  it  with  his 
outward  eye,  and  his  after-pleasure,  as  it  were, 
his  lingering  delight,  will  be  in  proportion  as 
his  ear  retains  the  echo  of  the  song.  All  poets 
are  minstrels,  still.  Such  a  creed  is  defective, 
in  the  second  place,  because  it  has  always 
been  the  mission  of  genuine  poets  to  impress 
their  vision  of  the  world  vividly  on  mankind, 
though  their  vision  included  more,  sometimes, 
than  what  the  realists  choose  to  consider  reality. 
There  is  nothing  new  in  such  an  effort.  In 
slack  ages  of  poetic  inspiration,  however,  the 
versifiers  have  no  vision  of  the  world,  but  only 
of  its  pale  mirrored  reflections  in  visions  dead 
and  gone,  and  some  jolt  is  needed  to  bring  the 
poets  back  to  first-hand  observation.  Such  a  jolt 
are  the  new  poets.  Spoon  River  is  a  medicine,  a 
splendid  tonic.  But  the  form  of  Spoon  River  is 
not  conditioned  by  eternal  needs,  only  by  tem 
porary  ones.  Its  complete  absence  of  loveliness, 
of  lines  that  linger,  will  be  its  greatest  handicap 
to  immortality — for  poetic  immortality  to-day  as 


jo         New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line 

much  as  ever  is  not  in  the  pages  of  a  book  on  a 
library  shelf,  but  on  the  lips  of  men  and  women. 
A  poem  from  which  nobody  ever  quotes  is  a 
poem  forgotten. 

Tennyson  was  something  of  an  Imagist  at 
times,  presenting  his  mood  or  picture  with  a 
Flaubertian  precision  of  epithet  that  even  Amy 
Lowell  could  not  criticise.  Consider,  for  exam 
ple,  his  famous  Fragment  on  the  eagle: 

He  clasps  the  crag  with  crooked  hands 
Close  to  the  sun  in  distant  lands, 
Ringed  with  the  azure  world  he  stands. 

Beneath,  the  wrinkled  ocean  crawls, 
He  watches  from  his  mountain  walls, 
And  like  a  thunderbolt  he  falls. 

The  precision  of  wording  here,  the  tremendous- 
ness  of  scene  evoked  with  stark  economy  of 
means,  the  triumphant  vividness  of  the  adjective 
"wrinkled,"  transporting  the  reader  at  once  to  a 
great  height  above  the  plain  of  the  sea,  the 
complete  absence  of  any  touch  of  the  "poetic" 
(surely  the  beautiful  word  azure  may  be  admit 
ted  in  modern  company),  make  this  poem  a 
masterpiece  without  date  or  time.  It  is  as  "new" 
as  the  latest  Imagist  anthology.  And,  be  it 
noted,  I  have  quoted  it  correctly,  I  feel  confi 
dent,  from  memory.  My  copy  of  Tennyson  is 
in  storage,  and  I  have  not  read  the  fragment 
probably  in  ten  or  a  dozen  years.  Yet  whenever 


New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line         7 1 

I  wish  to  relive  its  mood,  to  see  again  its  incom 
parable  picture,  I  have  only  to  move  my  lips, 
even  only  to  repeat  the  lines  inwardly,  in  silence, 
and  the  poem  is  mine  again. 

But  I  have  just  been  reading  the  latest  Im- 
agist  anthology,  especially  the  Lacquer  Prints 
by  Amy  Lowell,  not  ten  years,  but  hardly  ten 
minutes  ago — and  I  cannot  repeat  one  of  them. 
I  could  learn  them,  of  course,  by  an  effort.  But 
that  is  not  the  way  man  desires  to  remember 
music  and  poetry.  It  must  come  singing  into 
his  head  and  heart — and  remain  there  without 
his  effort.  Here  is  a  "Lacquer  Print "  called  Sun 
shine.  It  is  indeed  vivid,  though  (quite  prop 
erly,  of  course)  a  little  garden  pool  to  Tenny 
son's  vast  ocean. 

The  pool  is  edged  with  blade-like  leaves  of  irises. 
If  I  throw  a  stone  into  the  placid  water 
It  suddenly  stiffens 
Into  rings  and  rings 
Of  sharp  gold  wire. 

Here  is  a  vivid  picture,  here  is  economy  and 
scrupulous  selection  of  epithet,  here  is  no  "po 
etic"  didtion  of  the  despised  sort.  But  some 
thing  is  lacking,  none  the  less.  It  does  not  haunt 
you,  it  does  not  ingratiate  itself  with  your  ear, 
you  do  not  find  yourself  repeating  it  days  and 
months  later.  Close  the  book — and  the  poem 
perishes,  even  as  those  rings  subside  on  the  pool. 


72         New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line 

It  would  be  only  too  easy  to  find  much  more 
striking  examples  in  the  new  verse.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  opening  stanza  of  Ezra  Pound's 
poem,  The  Return: 

See,  they  return ;  ah,  see  the  tentative 
Movements,  and  the  slow  feet, 
The  trouble  in  the  pace  and  the  uncertain 
Wavering ! 

It  is  doubtful  if  any  reader  will  fail  to  see  the 
trouble  in  the  pace  of  these  lines!  No  doubt  it 
was  exactly  the  effecT:  the  poet  desired,  but  it 
will  forever  effectually  prevent  the  repetition  of 
his  poem  by  anybody  without  the  book.  When 
a  woman  once  boasted  that  she  could  repeat 
anything  on  a  single  hearing,  Theodore  Hook 
rattled  off  the  immortal  nonsense,  beginning, 
"'She  went  into  the  garden  patch  to  get  a  cab 
bage  head  to  make  an  apple  pie,  and  a  great  she 
bear  coming  up  the  road  thrust  her  head  into 
the  shop  and  cried  'What,  no  soap?'  and  so  he 
died — "  and  the  woman  was  floored.  Such  a 
poem  as  The  Return  would  have  floored  her 
quite  as  completely.  I  find,  after  reading  care 
fully  all  the  twenty  pages  assigned  to  Ezra 
Pound  in  The  New  "Poetry  ^Anthology,  edited  by 
Miss  Monroe  (a  greater  space,  I  believe,  than  was 
awarded  to  any  other  poet),  that  I  can  now  repeat 


New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line         73 

just  one  line — or,  rather,  two  lines,  such  is  Mr. 
Pound's  odd  way  of  phrasing  his  rhythms.  Here 

they  are: 

Dawn  enters  with  little  feet 

Like  a  gilded  Pavlova. 

There  is  a  certain  humorous  charm  of  epithet 
here,  and  a  rhythmic  suggestion  of  metrical  beat 
to  follow.  That,  no  doubt,  is  why  the  line  has 
stuck  in  my  memory.  But  the  metrical  beat  did 
not  follow,  and  the  rest  of  the  stanza  has  gone 
from  me.  I  am  sure  even  a  gilded  Pavlova 
would  be  at  some  difficulty  to  dance  to  Mr. 
Pound's  rhythms. 

But  Miss  Monroe  is  catholic  in  her  choice  ot 
new  poets.  She  includes,  for  instance,  Walter 
de  la  Mare,  if  in  less  than  two  pages.  She  se 
lects  his  wonderful  poem  The  Listeners,  and  the 
quaint,  haunting,  Epitaph.  It  is  a  little  hard  to 
see  just  why  The  Listeners  is  new  poetry,  except 
chronologically.  Its  odd,  apparently  simple  but 
really  intricate  and  triumphantly  fluid  metrical 
structure,  so  unified  that  there  is  no  break  from 
the  first  syllable  to  the  last ;  its  lyric  romanticism 
of  subject;  its  obvious  delight  in  tune;  even  its 
occasional  lapses  into  the  ancient  "poetic"  vocab 
ulary  (the  traveler  "smote"  the  door,  the  listen 
ers  "hearkened,"  and  so  on),  are  all  a  part  of  the 
nineteenth-century  tradition  of  English  verse. 


74         New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line 

It  is  no  more  modern  than  La  Belle  Dame  Sans 
Merci — which,  to  be  sure,  is  quite  modern  in 
deed  to  some  of  us.  And  it  has  lyric  beauty,  it 
has  lines  of  unforgettable  musical  loveliness,  it 
creeps  in  through  the  ear  and  echoes  in  the 
memory.  You  surely  remember  the  close: 

Never  the  least  stir  made  the  listeners, 

Though  every  word  he  spake 
Fell  echoing  through  the  shadowiness  of  the  still  house 

From  the  one  man  left  awake : 
Ay,  they  heard  his  foot  upon  the  stirrup, 

And  the  sound  of  iron  on  stone, 
And  how  the  stillness  surged  softly  backward, 

When  the  plunging  hoofs  were  gone. 

Is  there  really  any  loss  of  sharpness  in  the  im 
agery  here  because  of  the  rhyme  and  metre? 
Could  any  phrase,  of  any  rhythm,  however  free, 
render  any  better  and  more  economically  the 
peculiar  noise  of  a  horse  turning  on  a  hard  drive 
and  starting  away  in  the  night,  than  "the  sound 
of  iron  on  stone"?  The  last  two  lines,  surely, 
are  close  to  perfection.  A  genuine  new  poet 
would  probably  have  hunted  long  for  a  less 
hackneyed  word  than  "plunging,"  but  though 
it  would  possibly  have  sharpened  his  final  image, 
it  would,  at  the  same  time,  in  all  probability, 
have  robbed  it  of  that  very  vagueness  sought 
and  captured.  No,  the  passage  pidtorially  and 
emotionally  is  as  near  perfection  as  it  is  often 


New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line         75 

permitted  mortals  to  approach,  and  it  lingers  and 
echoes  in  the  memory,  it  will  not  be  forgotten. 
It  has  the  lilt  of  music,  the  chime  of  tune,  the 
immemorial  loveliness  of  song.  If  the  precise 
image,  the  desired  emotional  effect,  the  intel 
lectual  content  can  be  imparted  in  fettered  verse, 
and,  in  addition,  the  ancient  loveliness  can  be 
retained,  which  the  new  verse  lacks,  can  it  be 
possible  that  the  world  will  long  endure  to  read 
vers  libre  when  vers  libre  has  done  its  work  of 
bringing  poets  back  to  first-hand  reality  for  their 
subjects,  relating  the  minstrels  to  the  spirit  of 
their  age?  I  cannot  think  so.  I  cannot  but  be 
lieve  that  any  poetry  long  to  endure  must  be 
memorable,  in  the  literal  sense,  and  that  is 
just  what  the  new  poetry  is  not.  Already,  it 
seems  to  me  from  my  acquaintance  with  under 
graduates  and  the  just-graduated,  vers  libre  is  a 
little  the  cult  of  the  middle-aged,  while  youth, 
the  future,  is  swinging  back  gladly  to  the  fetters 
of  metre  and  rhyme,  and  probably  forgetful  that 
the  public  which  awaits  their  effort  has  been  pre 
pared  anew  for  poetry  by  this  revolt  from  what 
was  stale  in  tradition.  I  believe  that  memorable 
poetry  always  has  been,  and  always  must  be,  ir 
radiated  by 

The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 

which  is  but  another  way   of  saying  that   it 
must  have  elevation  and  the  haunting  mystery 


j6         New  Poetry  and  the  Lingering  Line 

of  beauty.  The  trouble  is,  of  course,  to  catch 
this  authentic  radiation,  instead  of  some  pale 
reflection  from  Patmore  or  Rossetti.  It  was 
against  the  sham  of  second-hand  mood  and 
subjedt,  rather  than  the  great  truth  of  music 
and  loveliness,  that  the  new  poets  broke  into 
unmetrical  protest.  They  have  done  a  brave  and 
needed  work, — but  they  have  produced  aston 
ishingly  little  quotable  poetry,  they  have  sung 
their  way  not  far  into  the  hearts  of  their  lis 
teners.  The  lingering,  lovely  line  is  not  for 
them.  No,  for  still, 

The  soul  of  Adonais,  like  a  star, 

Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  Eternal  are. 


The  J^ies  We  J^earn  in  Our  Youth 

THE  world  for  a  great  many  years  has  accepted 
the  didhim  of  the  poet,  that — 

Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 

The  saddest  are  these :  It  might  have  been. 

Even  those  people  who  refused  to  accept  the 
rhyme  have  accepted  the  reason.  But  the  facl 
is  that  the  reason  of  this  copybook  couplet  is  as 
bad  as  the  rhyme.  It  would  be  much  nearer  the 
truth  to  say  that  o±  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or 
pen,  the  saddest  are  these:  He's  succeeded  again' 
Here,  too,  the  rhyme  may  be  questioned,  but 
the  reason  is  sound.  An  entirely  successful  man 
is  the  most  pitiful  objecl:  in  the  universe.  Not 
only  has  he  nothing  to  look  forward  to,  but  he 
has  nothing  to  look  back  upon.  Having  no  re 
grets,  no  shadows,  in  his  life,  he  has  no  chiaro 
scuro,  no  depth,  no  solidity  in  his  picture.  It  is 
painted  in  the  flat.  "Regret,"  says  George 
Moore,  to  change  the  figure  a  little,  "is  like  a 
mountain  top  from  which  we  survey  our  dead 
life,  a  mountain  top  on  which  we  pause  and 
ponder."  He  has  no  point  of  view,  then,  either. 


78          The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth 

So  after  all  the  words,  "It  might  have  been,"  do 
bear  a  sadness  about  them  in  his  case;  his  life 
might  have  been  a  success  if  it  had  only  been  a 
failure.  "It  might  have  been"  thus  becomes 
sad  when  it  reflects  back  upon  itself,  when  it 
means  there  might  have  been  a  might  have  been 
but  there  was  only  a  was.  So  life  whirls  into 
paradox! 

Let  any  man  in  honesty  retire  into  the  soli 
tude  of  his  soul  and  reflect  on  his  joys  that 
might  have  been  and  those  that  were,  and  let 
him  then  answer  whether  any  of  his  realizations 
were  the  equal  of  his  anticipations.  Therefore, 
if  he  had  achieved  the  anticipated  but  lost  de 
lights  which  form  the  burden  of  his  "Might 
have  been,"  they,  too,  would  have  been  as  ashes 
in  the  mouth.  The  truth  is  that  the  essence  of 
delight  is  in  the  anticipation,  the  best  of  life  is 
the  vision,  not  the  reality.  It  is  pathetic  not  to 
have  entertained  the  vision,  but  more  pathetic, 
perhaps,  to  have  attained  it.  Wasn't  it  Oscar 
Wilde  who  said  that  there  is  only  one  thing 
more  tragic  than  failure — success? 

Did  our  regretful  poet  dream  at  twenty-one 
of  being  the  perfect  lover?  In  his  dreams  he 
was  the  perfect  lover,  then.  Yet  actually  what 
was  he?  What  was  she?  What  was  their  court 
ship,  their  marriage?  You,  prosy,  contented, 
forty  and  forgetful,  by  your  prosy  hearth  or 
shaking  down  the  furnace  fire,  while  the  chil- 


The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth         79 

dren  are  being  put  to  bed,  you  dare  to  call  "It 
might  have  been"  the  saddest  words  of  tongue 
or  pen?  Those  now  almost  forgotten  dreams  of 
what  might  have  been  are  the  best  you  ever 
were.  Remember  them  as  often  as  you  can,  as 
bitterly,  as  happily,  for  your  soul's  salvation. 
Without  them  you  are  the  lowest  of  God's 
creatures,  a  mere  married  man. 

Or  take  the  case  of  Maud  Muller  herself,  and 
her  judge.    We  learn  that  the  judge — 

Wedded  a  wife  of  richest  dower, 
Who  lived  for  fashion,  as  he  for  power. 

Maud,  on  the  other  hand, — 

Wedded  a  man  unlearned  and  poor, 

And  many  children  played  round  her  door. 

Probably  in  both  cases  this  was  for  the  best. 
Only  the  wildest  sentimentalist  could  in  serious 
ness  urge  that  Maud  would  have  made  a  good 
wife  for  the  judge.  Being  a  man  who  "lived  for 
power,"  the  probable  unpresentableness  of  Maud 
in  a  town  house  would  have  been  a  constant 
thorn  in  his  flesh.  She  could  not  appear  bare 
footed  at  his  receptions,  and  the  feet  that  have 
gone  bare  through  an  agricultural  girlhood  do 
not  readily  adapt  themselves  to  the  size  of  shoe 
which  urban  fashion  dictates.  Moreover,  the 
vague  yearnings  of  a  young  girl  for  an  alliance 
with  a  handsome  stranger  above  her  station,  do 


8o         The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth 

not  fit  her  to  speak  the  speech  and  think  the 
thoughts  and  meet  the  social  demands  of  that 
station.  No,  Maud  would  have  been  a  constant 
thorn  in  the  judge's  side.  Summer  sunshine,  the 
smell  of  hay,  a  drink  of  cold  water,  a  pretty, 
barefoot  girl — the  mood  is  compounded.  An 
uneducated  farmer's  daughter  for  a  wife — the 
reality  is  accomplished. 

And  as  for  Maud,  who  will  say  for  certain 
that  she  would  not  eventually  have  eloped  with 
the  coachman  because  he  praised  her  pies  in 
stead  of  criticising  her  grammar? 

So  to  each  of  them — barefoot  girl  and  bald- 
headed  judge  (he  probably  was  bald-headed, 
though  the  poem  omits  to  say  so)  did  what  was 
best,  and  the  school  children  for  several  gener 
ations  have  been  taught  to  waste  unnecessary 
sympathy  over  their  fate,  have  been  inculcated 
with  a  false  view  of  the  whole  matter.  Both  of 
them  found  far  more  happiness  in  dreaming  of 
what  might  have  been  than  ever  they  could 
have  found  in  the  realization;  for  each  of  them 
this  dream  brought  undoubted  sadness,  but  the 
sadness  which  is  really  pleasure,  the  sadness,  that 
is,  which  comes  over  all  of  us  when  we  realize 
that  though  we  have  missed  certain  ideals  in  our 
lives  we  are  still  able  to  recall  those  ideals,  we 
are  still  not  like  all  the  dead,  forgetful  clods 
around  us,  our  wives  and  husbands  and  neigh 
bors  and  friends.  We  live  with  these  people  as 


The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth         81 

one  of  them,  of  course,  but  we  might  have  been 
so  much  better  than  they!  Such  reflections  as 
these  are  a  great  comfort.  They  bring  a  sadness 
which  makes  us  mournfully  happy.  They  rec 
oncile  us  with  the  scheme  of  things.  They  are 
the  outcroppings  of  that  secret  vanity  which  the 
best  and  the  worst  of  us  nourish,  and  of  which  is 
born  our  self-respect,  our  happiness,  our  heroism. 
Once  upon  a  time,  long,  long  ago,  there  was 
a  town  called  Abdera.  The  good  people  of 
the  town  were  so  much  upset  at  seeing  a  per 
formance  of  the  Andromeda  of  Euripides  that 
they  caught  a  sort  of  tragic  fever.  This  began 
with  bleeding  and  perspiration  and  was  followed 
in  about  a  week's  time,  according  to  the  course  of 
the  disease,  by  an  uncontrollable  desire  to  recite. 
The  effect  upon  Abdera  was  surprising.  The 
people  walked  about  in  the  streets  day  and 
night  reciting  pages  of  Euripides  until  the  epi 
demic  was  cured  by  a  return  of  the  cold  weather. 
Well,  Tolstoy  would  have  us  believe  that  the 
European  and  English-speaking  world  to-day  is 
about  in  this  condition  regarding  Shakespeare, 
and  that  there  is  little  hope  of  a  cold  spell.  A 
second-rate  fellow,  this  Bard  of  Avon,  according 
to  Tolstoy,  whom  by  a  gigantic  process  of  hyp 
notic  suggestion  we  have  been  taught  to  think 
great,  till  we  go  about  quoting  him  as  the  law 
and  the  prophet,  while  he  fills  some  hundred 
and  seventeen  pages  of  Bartlett. 


82         The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth 

There  is  undoubtedly  something  in  this  view 
of  the  matter.  Without  holding  a  brief  either 
for  the  alleged  immortal  William  or  the  author 
of  What  Is  Art?,  it  may  safely  be  hazarded 
that  at  least  fifty  per  cent  of  the  "familiar  quo 
tations"  we  children  laboriously  copied  into  ruled 
blank  books  in  our  school  days  and  have  ever 
since  regarded  as  nuggets  of  truth  and  gems  of 
poetry  are  neither  true  nor,  beyond  the  fad:  of 
rhyme,  poetic.  Something  as  a  wave  of  sugges 
tion  passed  over  Europe  and  sent  thousands  of 
little  ones  down  to  their  deaths  in  the  Chil 
dren's  Crusades,  thousands  of  youngsters  in  our 
schools  to-day  are  hypnotized  into  a  lasting  be 
lief  in  the  poetic  value  of  numberless  couplets  of 
second-rate  verse,  and  never  come  to  know  real 
poetry  at  all.  Having  been  forced  to  swallow 
rhymed  platitudes  in  the  belief  that  they  are 
poetry,  a  permanent  and  perfectly  natural  re 
pulsion  for  the  very  name  of  poetry  is  too  often 
the  children's  only  acquisition.  In  fad:,  it  is  a 
pretty  question  if  the  decline  of  poetic  appre 
ciation  cannot  be  dired:ly  traced  to  the  rise  of 
the  memory-gem  book. 

How  well  I  remember  my  own  sense  of 
weariness  and  repulsion  when  I  was  compelled 
at  the  tender  age  of  ten  to  copy  out  the  whole 
of  The  Psalm  of  Life,  unconsciously  committing 
it  to  memory  as  I  did  so. 


The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth          83 

Life  is  real,  life  is  earnest, 

And  the  grave  is  not  its  goal  ; 

Dust  thou  art,  to  dust  returnest, 
Was  not  spoken  of  the  soul. — 

My  infant  lips  muttered  the  meaningless  words 
while  my  poor  little  brain  and  imagination  tried 
to  find  some  joy,  some  pi6hire,  some  tangible 
delight,  some  inspiration  in  the  mournful,  op 
pressive  poem.  If  I  had  then  been  assigned  in 
telligible  verses  to  copy,  an  Elizabethan  lyric,  a 
song  that  sang  because  it  had  to,  a  bit  of  imagery, 
my  childish  fancy  would  have  been  fired,  and  I 
should  not  have  had  to  wait  till  I  was  eighteen 
years  old  before  I  read  a  single  poem  voluntarily. 
And  I  should  not  have  detested  The  Psalm  of 
Life  all  the  rest  of  my  days — at  least  I  don't 
think  I  should.  Longfellow  when  I  was  a  child 
was  a  particularly  prolific  mine  of  memory 
gems,  running  as  high  as  three  thousand  quota 
tions  to  the  ton.  I  never  had  a  teacher  who 
didn't  know  her  Longfellow  with  an  intimacy 
almost  as  great  as  her  ignorance  of  Keats,  Shelley, 
Herrick,  Lovelace,  Suckling,  Herbert,  Campion, 
Coleridge,  Burns  and  the  rest  of  the  kings  who 
lived  before  Agamemnon.  Longfellow  was  a 
lovely  soul,  and,  within  his  limits,  a  very  true 
poet.  But  I  was  fed  on  his  platitudes.  I  was 
daily  informed  that — 

The  heights  by  great  men  reached  and  kept 
Were  not  attained  by  sudden  flight. — 


84          The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Touth 

Just  as  if  I  cared,  at  ten,  whether  they  were  or 
not.  I  was  told  in  tripping  measures  of  the  vil 
lage  chestnut  tree,  to  the  total  exclusion  of  the 
linden  and  ilex;  and  as  for  the  land  where  the 
citrons  bloom,  and  golden  oranges  are  in  the 
gloom,  and  the  long  silences  of  laurel  rise — 
1  Kennst  du  das  Land?"  Not  I!  The  spreading 
chestnut  tree  alone  cast  its  oppressive  shadow 
across  my  childish  fancy. 

Another  memory  gem  that  I  remember  with 
a  lasting  grudge  was — 

Kind  hearts  are  more  than  coronets, 
And  simple  faith  than  Norman  blood. 

This  I  knew  was  false,  and  to  be  forced  glibly 
to  chatter -the  words  before  the  class  shamed 
and  angered  me.  Had  not  a  maiden  aunt  of 
mine,  after  many  trips  to  the  library  of  the  New 
England  Genealogical  Society,  traced  back  our 
line  to  William  the  Conqueror?  Was  there 
another  boy  or  girl  in  the  school  who  had  de 
scended  from  William  the  Conqueror?  No,  sir! 
Several  of  them  had  kind  hearts,  and  doubtless 
simple  faith — whatever  that  was — but  side  of 
my  Norman  blood  this  counted  for  nothing.  It 
is  a  vastly  superior  thing  to  have  Norman  blood, 
and  as  for  coronets — well,  it  may  be  that  the 
new  age  will  wipe  them  literally  out  in  a  surge 
of  Democracy — some  of  us  hope  so — but  to  the 
romantic  heart  of  childhood  they  are  a  symbol 


The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Youth         85 

not  of  caste  and  oppression  but  of  dignity  and 
beauty  and  the  heroic.  Certainly  they  are  not  to 
be  eliminated  by  throwing  at  the  child's  head 
such  adult  platitudes  in  rhyme  as  these,  and  tell 
ing  him  it  is  poetry.  Alas!  he  believes  you,  and  that 
is  why  he  hates  the  very  word  poetry  all  the  rest 
of  his  days. 

My  memory-gem  book  lies  before  me  as  I 
write,  saved  I  know  not  how  out  of  the  wreck  of 
boyhood.  I  have  searched  it  in  vain  for  a  single 
quotation  of  lyric  song,  a  single  scrap  of  verse  that 
paints  the  world  in  rosy  colors  and  lets  moral  plat 
itudes  go  hang,  a  single  strain  of  "Celtic  magic/' 
Instead,  I  learn  that  as  a  boy  I  was  taught  that — 

We  are  living,  we  are  dwelling 
In  a  grand  and  awful  time. 

I  find  that  at  eleven  years  of  age — 

I  held  it  truth  with  him  who  sings 
To  one  clear  harp  of  divers  tones, 
That  men  may  rise  on  stepping-stones 

Of  their  dead  selves  to  higher  things. 

Indeed,  I  must  have  been  a  very  remarkable 
child,  how  remarkable  I  had  not  hitherto  sus 
pected!  Evidently,  too,  I  displayed  an  early 
tendency  to  melancholia,  for  I  find  I  was  ad 
monished  in  the  following  words,  with  their 
incontestable  statement  of  fad:: 

Be  still,  sad  heart,  and  cease  repining, 
Behind  the  clouds  is  the  sun  still  shining. 


86         The  Lies  We  Learn  in  Our  Touth 

Whether  my  sadness  was  caused  by  too  much 
reflection  on  the  facl:  that  life  is  real,  life  is 
earnest,  and  the  grave  is  not  its  goal,  or  on  the 
fact  that  Bill  Carter's  air-gun  cost  more  than 
mine,  I  cannot  now  recall.  Either  cause  would 
have  been  sufficient.  At  any  rate  I  apparently 
braced  up  and  smiled  once  more,  for  the  next 
page  is  blank.  That  means  I  went  fishing! 

Poor  kiddies!  Shall  we  grown-ups  never  learn 
that  their  minds  don't  work  as  ours  do,  and  what 
may  be  poetry  for  some  of  us  is  cod-liver  oil  for 
them?  Why  must  we  be  forever  nagging  them  at 
home  with  "Don't  do  this"  and  "Don't  do  that/' 
and  forever  preaching  at  them  in  school  with  pon 
derous  prose  platitudes  cut  up  into  lengths?  How 
much  wiser  than  we  they  are,  who  know  that  life 
is  free  and  pleasant  and  full  of  melody  and  beautiful 
things,  and  dreams  more  real  than  reality,  and  real 
ity  born  of  the  dream !  Yet  we  try  our  best  to  con 
vince  them  that  they  are  wrong.  We  see  to  it  that 
Longfellow  lies  about  them  in  their  infancy. 

But  perhaps  all  this  is  changed  since  my  day, 
and  the  nightmare  this  battered  memory-gem 
book  recalls  to  my  mind  is  no  longer  a  load  on 
the  children  of  the  present.  I  profoundly  hope 
so.  Can  it  be  that  the  present  revival  of  poetry 
is  due  to  the  passing  of  the  memory-gem  book? 
At  least,  no  teacher  would  have  the  courage  to 
set  her  class  the  task  of  copying  Amy  Lowell 
or  The  Spoon  River  ^Anthology  \ 


The  2W '^Manners  ofTolite  ^People 

ALL  my  life  I  have  suffered  from  politeness — 
not  my  own,  but  the  politeness  of  other  people. 
So  far  as  I  know,  nobody  has  ever  accused  me 
of  being  polite.  I  suspect  that  I  must  be,  how 
ever,  for  hitherto  I  have  borne  the  politeness  of 
other  people  without  a  protest.  But  I  must 
protest  now,  if  only  to  vindicate  my  lack  of 
politeness;  in  other  words,  to  prove  my  good 
manners. 

For  what  I  object  to  in  polite  people  is  their 
bad  manners.  It  is  this  I  have  suffered  from, 
as,  I  suspect,  have  many  thousands  of  my  fel 
lows,  to  whom  life  is  real  and  earnest,  and  gab 
ble  not  its  goal.  As  a  rule,  the  politer  the  person 
the  worse  are  his  (or  more  often,  perhaps,  her) 
manners.  The  limit  is  reached  when  the  ama 
teur  is  sunk  entirely  in  the  professional,  and  that 
curious  product  of  "Society''  is  developed,  the 
professional  hostess.  I  cannot  better  illustrate 
my  theme  than  with  a  description  of  the  profes 
sional  hostess. 

I  call  her  professional  because  all  the  joy  of 
entertaining  for  its  own  sake  has  gone  out  of 


88          The  'BadtManners  of  ^Polite  People 

her  work.  She  does  not  invite  people  to  her 
parties  because  she  is  glad  to  see  them,  because 
she  is  interested  in  them,  or  wishes  to  give  them 
pleasure.  She  invites  them  because  to  entertain 
them  is  a  part  of  her  day's  work — whether  her 
work  be  to  get  into  a  certain  social  stronghold, 
to  keep  that  stronghold  against  assault,  or  merely 
to  kill  time,  her  arch-enemy.  And,  in  perform 
ing  this  task  of  hers,  she  has  developed  a  tech 
nique  of  politeness  which  is  to  the  amateur's 
technique  what  the  professional  golf-player's 
style  is  to  the  form  of  the  mere  bumblepuppy. 
Her  politeness  is  astonishingly  brilliant,  flexible, 
resourceful.  It  is  aspired  to  by  the  lowly  and 
aped  on  the  stage.  And  yet  her  manners  are  the 
worst  in  the  world. 

Let  us  suppose  her  about  to  give  a  dinner. 
She  is  trimmed  down  to  the  fashionable  slender- 
ness  (perhaps),  and  brilliant  with  jewels.  Can- 
nel  coal  snaps  pleasantly  in  the  drawing-room 
grate,  and  the  lights  are  gratefully  shaded.  A 
guest  or  two  arrive,  whom  she  greets  with  af 
fable  handshake.  The  man  moves  over  to  the 
fire,  warming  his  back;  his  wife  talks  to  the 
hostess  rapidly,  in  the  way  women  have  when 
they  seem  to  think  it  better  to  say  anything  than 
not  to  speak  at  all.  But  the  hostess  is  quite  at 
her  ease.  Her  politeness  is  triumphant.  Pres 
ently  she  turns  to  the  man,  who  is,  perhaps,  an 
author. 


The  *BadtManners  ofTollte  People          89 

"Your  new  book/'  she  begins,  as  if  she  had 
been  waiting  all  day  to  ask  that  question,  " — what 
is  it  going  to  be  about?  I'm  tremendiously  eager 
to  know." 

Already  the  genial  fire  has  warmed  the  noted 
author  after  his  chilling  ride  in  a  street  car  to 
this  mansion  of  luxury.  The  kindly  question 
positively  expands  him.  He  launches  eagerly 
into  his  answer. 

"You  see,"  he  begins,  "the  great  modern 
question  is— 

But  suddenly  he  is  aware  that  he  has  no  listener. 
His  hostess  has  gone  toward  the  door  with  out 
stretched  hand,  and  his  own  wife  is  gazing  at  the 
gowns  of  the  women  entering.  The  author  turns 
and  prods  the  grate  with  his  toe.  Perhaps,  if  he  is 
new  at  being  "entertained,"  he  fancies  that  his 
hostess  will  presently  return  to  hear  his  answer. 
He  holds  it  in  readiness.  Poor  man! 

The  newcomers  are  brought  into  the  circle. 
When  introductions  are  necessary,  they  are  made 
with  studied  informality.  And  then  the  author 
hears  the  hostess  say  to  a  big,  energetic  woman, 
who  is  among  the  arrivals,  "Oh,  dear  Miss 
Jones,  I  have  heard  so  much  about  your  per 
fectly  splendid  work  down  there  among  the 
horrid  poor!  I  did  so  want  to  hear  you  talk 
about  it  at  the  Colonial  Club,  this  afternoon, 
but  I  simply  couldrit  get  there.  Won't  you  tell 
me  just  a  bit  of  what  you  said?" 


90          The  ^ad  ^Manners  ofTolite  "People 

The  tone  of  entreaty  betrays  the  utmost  in 
terest.  The  big,  energetic  woman  smiles,  and 
begins,  "Well,"  she  says,  "I  was  just  trying  to 
get  the  members  interested  in  our  new  health- 
tenement  for  consumptives.  You  see,  we  need — " 

Then  she,  too,  becomes  aware  that  her  audi 
ence  has  departed  toward  the  door.  She  turns 
about  to  see  if  anybody  else  was  listening,  but 
nobody  was.  The  other  women  are  engaged  in 
inspecting  the  newcomers.  The  men  are  look 
ing  uncomfortable,  or  chatting  with  one  another. 
Only  the  author's  sympathetic  gaze  meets  hers. 

The  guests  have  all  gathered  by  now,  but 
dinner  is  not  yet  announced.  The  hostess  moves 
easily  among  them,  stopping  by  each  with  a 
winning  smile,  to  ask  some  carefully  chosen 
personal  question.  Each  as  politely  replies,  only 
to  find  himself  talking  to  the  empty  air. 

There  is  soon  a  confused  babble  of  voices,  a 
whir  of  windy  words — and  no  one  hears. 

The  author  watches  her,  still  curious  to  know 
whether  she  will  remember  that  she  has  not  yet 
heard  his  answer.  But  she  has  quite  forgotten. 
She  moves,  the  incarnate  spirit  of  politeness, 
about  the  room,  rousing  trains  of  eager  ideas  in 
her  guests,  and  as  speedily  leaving  them  to  run 
down  a  side-track  into  a  bumper. 

She  has  no  real  interest  in  any  of  them, 
probably  she  has  no  real  understanding  of  them. 
She  thinks  her  manners  are  above  reproach,  that 


The  'Bad  ^Canners  of  Oolite  Teople          91 

she  is  treating  her  guests  in  the  most  exemplary 
fashion.  In  reality,  nothing  could  be  worse  than 
her  manners,  and  she  is  treating  her  guests  most 
shabbily.  By  being  polite,  she  ends  by  being  rude. 
For  nothing  is  so  rude  in  this  world  as  to  ask  a 
man  a  question  about  some  subject  close  to  his 
heart  when  you  have  no  intention  of  listening  to 
his  answer,  nor  any  interest  in  it.  The  hostess 
thinks  to  feed  his  vanity;  she  ends  by  wounding 
it.  She  thinks  to  make  her  guests  comfortable; 
she  ends  by  making  them  uncomfortable. 

The  best  manners  I  have  ever  seen  were  pos 
sessed  by  the  most  impolite  man  I  have  ever 
known.  As  a  result,  nobody  that  he  ever  in 
vited  to  his  house  felt  uncomfortable  there.  He 
was  interested  in  all  kinds  and  conditions  oj 
people,  all  kinds  and  conditions  of  activities. 
If  he  asked  you  a  question,  it  was  because  he 
wanted  to  hear  your  answer.  He  paid  you  the 
compliment  of  assuming  that  it  was  worth 
listening  to,  and  other  people  waited  till  you 
were  through.  At  his  table  you  weren't  supposed 
to.  confine  your  talk  to  the  sweet  young  thing 
on  your  left,  who  was  more  interested  in  the 
gay  young  blade  on  her  left,  nor  to  the  sedate, 
elderly  female  person  on  your  right,  who  was 
more  interested  in  the  bishop  on  her  right.  Talk 
was  largely  for  the  whole  table;  and  if  you 
hadn't  some  definite  contribution  to  make,  you 
were  usually  glad  to  keep  still. 


92          "The  *Bad  ^Manners  ofTolite  ^People 

I  say  nobody  ever  felt  uncomfortable  in  his 
house.  That  is  not  quite  true.  Occasionally  the 
person  who  expressed  an  opinion  on  a  subject  he 
knew  nothing  about  must  have  felt  uncomfort 
able.  For,  though  he  was  listened  to  gravely 
while  speaking,  conversation  was  at  once  re 
sumed  as  if  nothing  whatever  had  been  said. 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  conventionally 
impolite.  And  yet  the  act  was  so  utterly  free 
from  sham  that  it  seemed  the  only  decorous  and 
decent  thing  to  do.  Thus  was  the  dignity  of 
conversation  maintained;  thus  was  each  man  and 
woman  made  to  feel  his  or  her  worth  along 
personal  lines  of  endeavor;  thus  was  a  true 
democratic  spirit  preserved,  which  is  the  real 
essence  of  good  manners.  True  democracy  con 
sists  in  bringing  each  man  out,  not  in  reducing 
him  to  a  common  level  of  inanity.  Good  man 
ners  consist  in  showing  him  respect  for  what  is 
worthy  of  respecl  in  him,  treating  him  as  a 
rational  human  being,  not  as  a  mere  social  unit 
who  deposits  his  hard-won  opinions,  along  with 
his  hat  and  stick,  in  the  care  of  the  butler  when 
he  enters  the  house. 

That  is  why  men  have,  as  a  rule,  better  man 
ners  than  women,  though  they  are  far  less  po 
lite.  A  man  respects  the  judgment  of  a  special 
ist  on  any  given  subjecl:,  and  he  is  rather  intoler 
ant  of  the  snap  judgments  of  the  dabbler  or  the 
dilettante.  He  listens,  if  forced  to,  with  uncon- 


The  *Bad \Manners  ofPolite  "People          93 

cealed  impatience  to  the  babbling  of  his  pretty 
neighbor  at  table  about  art,  perhaps,  or  engi 
neering,  or  some  other  topic  concerning  which 
her  ignorance  is  as  profound  as  her  cocksureness 
is  lofty.  But,  after  all,  to  be  polite  to  her  is  to 
insult  a  whole  race  of  engineers  or  artists!  Put 
one  of  them  beside  him,  and  see  how  readily  he 
will  listen. 

Politeness  too  often  consists  of  shamming.  Good 
manners  are  the  absence  of  sham.  It  is  not  the  gen 
tleman's  place,  certainly,  to  insult  the  lady.  Good 
manners  seldom  go  quite  so  far  as  that.  But  even 
politeness  cannot  expert  him  to  endure  the  torture 
for  more  than  a  limited  time,  especially  if  the  topic 
chosen  chances  to  be  his  own  specialty.  It  is  his 
place  to  lead  the  conversation,  as  gently  as  possible, 
back  upon  more  neutral  ground,  where  he  may 
find  what  consolation  he  can  in  sprightly  person 
alities — while  praying  for  the  coffee. 

I  enjoy  the  privilege  of  acquaintance  with  a 
very  charming  person,  who  has  never  paid  a 
compliment  to  her  sex  except  by  being  a  wo 
man.  Some  of  her  sex  say  that  she  is  a  delight 
ful  hostess  and  very  beautiful.  Others  say  that 
she  is  atrociously  rude,  and  they  "can't  see  what 
it  is  people  admire  in  her."  Most  men  adore 
her.  She  herself  says  that  the  only  people  she 
cares  to  entertain  are  those  who  have  earned 
their  own  living.  Her  reasons  are,  I  believe,  in 
teresting  and  significant. 


94          The  ^ad  Manners  ofPolite  ^People 

She  earns  her  own  living,  I  may  state,  and  a 
very  considerable  one,  for  she  is  famous  ana 
highly  successful  in  her  branch  of  artistic  en 
deavor.  Socially,  one  may  say  of  her,  in  that 
atrocious  phrase  which  implies  a  queer  jumble 
of  values,  that  she  is  "very  much  in  demand/' 
But,  though  a  man  in  livery  opens  her  front  door, 
the  street-cars  bring  quite  as  many  guests  to  her 
house  as  do  expensively  purring  motor-cars. 

"For,"  as  she  puts  it,  "I  can  stand  the  talk  of 
the  average  woman  in  'Society'  just  about  fifteen 
minutes,  and  then  I  have  to  scream.  I  don't 
know  how  the  fidion  arose  that  American  women 
of  the  leisure  classes  are  so  superior  mentally  to 
the  women  of  other  nations.  The  fad:  is,  they 
are  not.  The  fad;  is,  that  they  are  so  superficial 
that  a  person  who  has  really  done  something  — 
I  don't  mean  who  has  played  at  it,  but  who  has 
really  under  the  spur  of  necessity  got  to  the  bot 
tom  of  some  one  subjed —  can  hardly  endure 
their  conversation.  They  chatter,  chatter,  chat 
ter,  about  everything  under  heaven,  and  if  you 
happen  to  know  anything  about  any  of  the  sub 
jects,  it  is  simply  torture  to  listen. 

"Life  is  too  short,  and  too  interesting,  and 
the  world  too  full  of  real  people,  to  bother  with 
the  folks  who  don't  know  their  business.  The 
man  or  woman  who  has  had  to  be  self-support 
ing  has  got  to  the  bottom  of  some  branch  of  ac 
tivity,  however  small,  and  learned  humility.  To 


The  2W  ^Manners  ofTolite  "People         95 

learn  that  mastery  of  even  a  tiny  subject  requires 
effort  and  concentration  and  skill,  is  to  learn  re- 
sped:  for  other  subjects;  and  it  is  to  learn,  too, 
how  to  listen. 

"Nobody  can  listen  who  isn't  truly  interested, 
and  who  hasn't  the  grasp  of  mind  to  appreciate 
the  complexities  of  a  craft  not  his  own,  who 
doesn't  know  enough  to  know  when  he  doesn't 
know  anything.  If  I'm  going  to  talk  my  shop, 
I  want  to  talk  it  with  folks  who've  been  in  it. 
If  I'm  going  to  hear  some  other  shop  discussed, 
it  must  be  by  someone  who  is  familiar  with 
that,  not  by  direftoired  dabblers  who,  you  feel 
after  three  minutes  have  elapsed,  don't  know  a 
thing  about  the  subject.  If  politeness  consists  in 
letting  them  suppose  that  I  take  any  stock  in 
what  they  say,  then  I  plead  guilty  to  being  a 
boor." 

Probably  no  one  who  has  experienced  the 
awful  ordeal  of  listening  to  some  female  chatter 
about  his  chosen  subject,  or  who  has  undergone 
the  even  worse  ordeal  of  dropping  great  thoughts 
of  his  own  into  the  deep,  deep  pools  of  her  in 
comprehension,  will  fail  of  sympathy  with  my 
friend. 

"But  I  tire  you,"  said  an  incessant  gabbler 
one  day  to  the  great  Due  de  Broglie. 

"No,  no,"  replied  the  duke;  "I  wasn't  lis 
tening." 


On  (jiving  up  Qolf  Forever 

LAST  season  I  gave  up  golf  forever  two  days 
before  our  course  opened  in  May,  on  the  even 
ings  of  June  1 7th  and  July  4th,  at  noon  on 
July  27th,  on  the  evenings  of  August  2nd,  gth, 
1 5th,  and  2ist,  at  11:15  A-M-  on  Labor  Day, 
again  Labor  Day  evening,  on  September  igth, 
23rd,  30th,  and  October  3rd,  nth  and  i8th. 
I  am  writing  this  in  mid-January,  when  the 
drifts  are  piled  five  feet  deep  over  our  bunkers, 
and  the  water-carries  are  frozen  solid.  I  have 
played  my  last  game  of  golf.  The  coming  sea 
son  I  shall  devote  to  the  intensive  cultivation  of 
my  garden.  The  links  have  no  allure  for  me. 

"And  if,"  says  rny  wife,  "I  could  believe  that, 
I  should  be  happier  than  ever  before  in  the  long 
years  of  my  golf  widowhood." 

"But  you  can,"  I  answer,  with  grieved  sur 
prise. 

She  looks  at  me,  with  that  superior  and 
tolerant  smile  women  know  so  well  how  to 
assume. 

"You  men  are  all  such  children!"  is  her,  it 
seems  to  me,  somewhat  irrelevant  retort. 


On  (jiving  up  Golf  Forever  97 

I  fell  to  musing  on  my  friend,  the  noted  war 
correspondent  (now  a  Major  in  the  United  States 
Army  in  France).  All  things  considered,  he 
was  the  most  consistent,  or  perhaps  I  should 
say  persistent,  quitter  the  game  of  golf  has  ever 
known.  He  used  to  quit  forever  on  an  average 
of  three  times  a  week,  and  I  have  known  him  to 
abandon  the  game  twice  during  a  round,  which 
is  something  of  a  record.  He  played  every  sum 
mer  on  our  beautiful  Berkshire  course,  which 
crosses  and  recrosses  the  winding  Housa tonic, 
not  to  mention  sundry  swamps,  and  boasts  the 
most  luxuriant  fairway,  and  by  the  same  token 
the  rankest  rough,  in  all  America.  It  is  the 
course  Owen  Johnson  once  immortalized  in  his 
story,  Even  Threes. 

How  well  I  remember  that  peaceful,  happy 
May,  back  in  1914!  Our  course  had  emerged 
from  its  annual  spring  flood,  newly  top-dressed 
with  rich  river  silt,  and  a  few  warm  days  brought 
the  turf  through  the  scars  and  made  the  whole 
glorious  expanse  of  fairway,  winding  through 
the  silver  willows,  a  velvet  carpet.  I  had  given 
my  orders  to  the  greens-keepers,  and  gone  to 
New  York  for  a  day  or  two — reludlantly,  of 
course — and  there  met  the  famous  war  cor 
respondent,  in  those  peaceful  times  out  of  a 
regular  job  and  turned  novelist  pro  tern.  He  had 
just  relieved  himself  of  his  final  chapter,  and 
readily  yielded  to  my  persuasions  to  return  with 

8 


98  On  Cfiving  up  Golf  Forever 

me  to  the  velvet  field  and  the  whistling  drive. 
We  "entrained,"  as  he  would  say  in  one  of  his 
military  dispatches. 

As  far  as  the  Massachusetts- Connecticut  state- 
line  he  talked  of  Mexican  revolutions,  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  Japanese  art,  <uers  libre,  mushrooms, 
and  such  other  topics  as  were  of  interest  in  the 
spring  of  1914.  But  at  the  state-line,  chancing 
a  look  out  of  the  window,  he  saw  the  doming 
billow  of  blue  mountains  which  marks  the  en 
trance  to  our  Berkshire  intervales,  and  a  strange 
gleam  came  into  his  eyes.  His  square  jaws  set. 
His  whole  countenance  was  transformed.  Turn 
ing  back  to  me,  he  half  hissed,  grimly, — 

"I  am  not  going  to  press  this  season!" 

I  knew  he  was  fairly  on  his  way  to  giving 
up  golf  forever. 

Of  course,  when  a  man  hasn't  played  all 
winter,  but  has  been  engaged  in  the  mild  and 
harmless  exercise  of  writing  a  novel,  his  hands 
become  soft.  Then,  when  he  suddenly  begins 
to  play  thirty-six  holes  a  day,  and  takes  a  lock- 
grip  on  his  clubs  as  tightly  as  if  he  supposed 
somebody  was  trying  to  snatch  them  away  from 
him,  he  is  apt  to  develop  certain  blisters.  To  a 
war  correspondent  and  traveler  over  the  Dawson 
Trail,  such  blisters  are  nothing.  To  a  golf  player 
they  are  of  profound  importance.  The  next  day, 
in  our  foursome,  they  affected  the  war  corre 
spondent's  game.  He  became  softly  querulons. 


On  (jiving  up  Golf  Forever  99 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  talk  when  I  am  about 
to  drive,"  he  complained  to  a  caddie. 

"This  mashie  is  too  heavy  for  me/'  he  mut 
tered  to  himself. 

"Every  time  I  make  a  stroke,  that  crack  on 
the  third  finger  of  my  left  hand,  above  the  top 
joint,  opens  and  pains  me,"  he  declared  to  any 
body  who  would  listen. 

His  drive  from  the  eighteenth  tee  went  ker 
plunk  into  the  mud,  and  buried  itself  like  a 
startled  woodchuck.  He  said  nothing,  but  took 
a  left-handed  club  from  his  bag  —  for  he  began 
the  game  left-handed,  and  had  switched  over  the 
year  before,  upon  hearing  our  professional  say  that 
no  left-handed  player  could  ever  become  a  great 
golfer.  With  this  fresh  implement,  he  began  to 
dig.  He  finished  the  hole  left-handed,  with  three 
perfect  shots !  We  tried  to  cheer  him  up,  but  he 
was  not  to  be  cheered. 

"What's  the  use!"  he  wailed.  "Here  I've 
spent  a  year  and  a  fortune  unlearning  how  to 
play  left-handed.  I'm  never  going  to  play  the 
confounded  game  again!" 

And,  by  way  of  token,  he  began  to  talk  about 
Theodore  Roosevelt. 

That  was  his  first  renunciation  for  1914.  The 
next  few  days  the  game  went  well,  and  so  did 
work  on  a  new  novel  he  had  commenced,  fired 
by  his  success  in  getting  off  seventeen  perfecl  tee- 
shots.  But  he  reached  his  fourth  chapter  and  an 


ioo  On  (jiving  up  Golf  Forever 

off  afternoon  on  the  same  fair  Saturday.  What 
a  lovely  day  it  was! — you  know,  one  of  those 
early  June  days  that  invariably  causes  some  woman 
to  quote  Lowell.  But  the  famous  war  correspon 
dent  saw  no  charm  in  the  leafy  luxury  around  him, 
in  the  blue  sky,  the  lush  grass.  He  heard  no 
pipe  of  birds  nor  whisper  of  the  breeze.  His 
driver  wasn't  working  right.  Then  his  over 
worked  mashie  went  back  on  him.  By  the 
fourth  green  he  was  taking  three  putts,  and  by 
the  eighth  he  was  picking  up.  His  face  was  a 
thundercloud;  his  vocabulary  disclosed  a  rich 
ness  gleaned  from  camp  and  field  which  was  a 
revelation  even  to  our  caddies;  and  that  is  no 
insignificant  accomplishment. 

Our  tenth  hole  in  those  days  was  close  to  the 
club-house,  and  the  tee  was  but  195  yards  away — 
a  good  iron  to  the  green.  By  the  time  we  reached 
this  tee,  the  war  correspondent  had  very  nearly 
exhausted  even  the  stock  of  expletives  he  had 
acquired  on  the  Dawson  Trail,  and  had  declared 
seven  times  that  he  was  through,  yes,  forever! 

"Oh,  come  on  and  play  just  this  hole — keep 
going  to  the-club  house  anyway,"  we  pleaded. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "I'll  take  one  more  shot- 
it's  my  last — positively.  I'm  going  back  to  New 
York  to-morrow." 

He  tossed  a  scarred,  cut,  battered  ball  on  the 
turf,  scorning  to  make  a  tee.  Yanking  a  cleek 
from  his  bag,  he  stepped  up  with  the  speed  of 


On  (giving  up  Golf  Forever  I.GI 

Duncan  and  swung.  To  our  amazement,  the 
ball  flew  like  a  bullet  to  the  mark  and  disappeared 
over  the  lip  of  the  green,  headed  straight  for  the 
pin.  But  he  never  saw  it.  He  wasn't  watching. 

"Good  shot !  "  we  cried,  with  real  enthusiasm. 

"I  wasn't  looking,  where'd  it  go?"  he  asked, 
with  an  attempt  at  scorn,  which,  however,  was 
manifestly  weakening. 

"Got  a  putt  fer  a  two,"  said  his  caddie. 

The  noted  man  cast  a  withering  look  at  this 
object  of  his  previous  invective.  He  still  sus 
pected  something.  We  backed  the  caddie  up, 
and  he  strode  down  the  fairway  with  a  certain 
reviving  spring  in  his  step. 

There  on  the  green,  not  six  inches  from  the 
cup,  reposed  his  battered  ball ! 

"Been  anybody  else  it  would  have  gone  in!" 
he  muttered,  as  he  sank  it  for  a  two. 

That  was  his  proud  surrender.  He  said  no 
more.  He  strode  ahead  to  the  next  tee,  and  tore 
out  a  long,  straight  drive.  Then  he  lit  a  ciga 
rette  and  remarked  that  he  had  never  seen  the 
willows  more  beautiful,  more  silvery  in  the 
afternoon  light. 

Ah,  well,  poor  chap,  he  did  give  up  golf  on 
the  first  of  August,  if  not  forever  at  least  for  the 
longest  period  of  abstinence  in  his  career  on  the 
links.  On  our  last  afternoon  over  the  velvet  to 
gether,  before  he  left  for  the  steamer  that  was 
to  take  him  into  the  maelstrom,  he  paid  little 


On  (jiving  up  Golf  Forever 

attention  to  his  game,  and  a  surprised  and,  I 
fancied,  even  a  slightly  disappointed  caddie  fol 
lowed  him.  (He  was  always  most  generous  to 
his  caddie  when  he  had  most  abused  him,  like 
the  hero  of  Goldoni's  comedy.) 

"I  sha'n't  see  nice,  sweet,  unscarred  green  sod 
again  for  a  long  time,"  he  said,  digging  up  a 
huge  divot  with  unconscious  irony.  "I'm  going 
to  my  last  war,  though/' 

"Gracious,"  said  I,  "are  you  going  to  give  up 
War  forever,  too?" 

"The  world  is  going  to  give  it  up  forever, 
after  this  one,"  he  replied. 

I  have  seen  him  twice  since,  once  when  he 
was  still  a  correspondent,  once  more  recently 
when  he  came  back  in  the  uniform  of  Uncle 
Sam.  And  each  time  his  greeting  has  been  the 
same: — 

"Have  you  got  rid  of  that  hook  yet?" 

Then  he  smiled — a  wistful,  tragic  smile,  and 
asked  where  all  the  new  traps  and  bunkers  are, 
how  we  contrived  to  lengthen  the  course,  whether 
the  new  sixth  green  is  in  play  yet,  all  the  pathet 
ically  unimportant  little  gossip  of  our  eighty  acres 
of  green  meadow. 

"Ah,"  he  said  the  last  time  we  parted,  "some 
day  I'm  coming  back  and  make  that  79  at  last! 
Anybody  can  go  over  the  top,  but  to  break  80 
at  Stockbridge — !" 

Then  he  left  for  the  trenches  of  France. 


On  (giving  up  Golf  Forever  103 

I  have  another  good  friend  who,  unlike  the 
Major,  has  never  given  up  golf  forever.  This,  as 
he  himself  admits  (or  I  should  not  dare  offer  the 
explanation),  is  because  he  has  never  yet  really 
played  it.  He,  too,  is  ratner  well  known  at  his 
avocation  of  play-writing;  but  golf  is  his  real 
business  in  life  when  the  season  once  gets  under 
way.  He  has  enabled  several  professionals  to  buy 
motor-cars,  he  has  sent  numerous  fore-caddies 
through  the  high  school,  he  has  practised  by  the 
hour  with  individual  clubs,  but  still,  after  almost 
a  quarter  of  a  century,  he  has  never  broken  90 
on  a  first-class  course.  From  my  superior  posi 
tion  (I  have  on  three  never-to-be-forgotten  oc 
casions  broken  80,  one  of  them  at  Manchester!), 
I  sometimes  wonder  what  keeps  him  at  the  game. 
Then  I  play  with  him,  and  realize.  He  has  the 
divine,  inexplicable  faculty,  once  or  twice  in  a 
round,  of  tearing  off  an  astounding  drive  of  300 
yards,  by  some  subtle  miracle  of  timing,  which 
after  hours  of  rolling  finally  comes  to  rest  far 
out  beyond  any  other  ball  in  the  foursome,  or 
even  the  professional's  drive.  What  does  it  mat 
ter  if  he  scruffs  his  approach?  What  does  it  'mat 
ter  if  he  takes  three  putts?  He  has  the  memory 
of  that  drive,  the  unexpected,  thrilling  feel  of  it 
in  arms  and  body,  the  tingling  vision  of  the  day 
when  he  will  find  out  how  he  did  it,  and  be 
able  to  repeat  at  will!  That  keeps  him  going — 
that,  and  a  trophy  he  once  achieved  by  winning 


104  On  (jiving  up  Golf  Forever 

the  beaten  eight  division  of  the  sixth  sixteen.  It 
was  a  little  pocket  match-safe,  but  it  is  more 
precious  in  his  eyes  than  pearls,  aye,  than  much 
fine  gold  or  his  reputation  as  perhaps  the  deft 
est  writer  of  dialogue  on  the  American  stage. 
It  represents  definite  achievement  in  the  game 
of  Golf. 

You  may  suppose,  dear  Reader,  if  by  some  mir 
acle  you  are  not  a  golfer,  that  I  have  been  press 
ing  the  essayist's  privilege  and  indulging  in  an 
attempt  at  whimsicality.  Nothing,  I  assure  you, 
could  be  farther  from  the  fact.  I  am,  in  this 
chapter,  a  realist.  All  I  have  here  set  down  is  a 
record  of  actuality.  Nay,  I  have  erred  on  the 
other  side.  I  have  said  nothing  whatever  about 
my  own  reasons  for  giving  up  golf  forever.  Nor 
have  I  told  the  story  of  the  elderly  gentlemen  at 
a  course  near  Boston,  whom  I  once  observed  in  an 
exhibition  of  renunciation  that  perhaps  deserved 
recording. 

This  course  was  of  nine  holes  (it  is  now  the 
site  of  several  apartment  houses),  and  the  last 
hole  called  for  a  carry  over  a  little  pond,  to  a 
green  immediately  in  front  of  the  club-house. 
The  somewhat  elderly  and  irascible  gentleman 
in  question,  playing  in  a  foursome,  had  reached 
this  ninth  tee  on  the  shore  of  the  pond,  and  even 
from  the  club  veranda  it  was  evident  that  his 
temper  was  not  of  the  best.  Things  had  not 
been  going  right  for  him.  His  three  companions 


On  (jiving  up  Golf  Forever  105 

carried  the  pond.  Then  he  teed  up,  and  drove — 
spash!  —  into  the  water.  A  remark  was  wafted 
through  the  still  air.  He  teed  again  —  another 
splash.  Then  followed  an  exhibition  which  I 
fear  my  wife  would  describe  as  childish.  First 
this  elderly  gentleman  spoke,  in  a  loud,  vexed 
voice.  Then  he  hurled  his  driver  into  the  pond. 
Then  he  snatched  his  bag  of  clubs  from  the  cad 
die's  shoulder,  seized  a  stone  from  the  pond  side, 
stuffed  it  into  the  bag,  grasped  the  strap  as  a  ham 
mer-thrower  the  handle  of  his  weight,  swung  the 
bag  three  times  around  his  head,  and  let  it  fly 
far  out  over  the  water.  It  hit  with  a  great  splash, 
and  sank  from  sight.  His  three  companions,  re- 
spe&ing  his  mood,  discreetly  continued  their  game, 
while  he  came  up  to  the  club-house,  sought  a 
far  corner  of  the  veranda,  and  with  a  face  closely 
resembling  a  Greek  mask  of  Tragedy,  sank  down 
huddled  into  a  chair. 

On  the  veranda,  too,  his  grief  was  respe<5ted. 
No  one  spoke  to  him.  In  fa6t,  I  think  no  one 
dared.  We  were  careful  that  even  our  mirth 
did  not  reach  his  ears.  He  was  alone  with  his 
thoughts.  The  afternoon  waned.  His  three  com 
panions  again  reached  the  ninth  tee,  drove  the 
pond,  and  came  into  the  club-house  to  dress. 
The  caddies  were  about  to  depart.  Then  a  strange 
thing  happened;  at  its  first  intimation  we  tip 
toed  to  a  window  to  observe.  He  roused  himself, 
leaned  over  the  rail,  and  called  a  caddie. 


io6  On  (jiving  up  Golf  Forever 

"Boy,"  we  heard  him  say,  in  a  deep,  tragic 
voice,  "can  you  swim?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  the  caddie  replied. 

"All  right.  About  thirty  feet  out  in  front  of 
the  ninth  tee  there's  a  bag  at  the  bottom  of  the 
pond.  Go  get  it  for  me,  and  I'll  give  you  five 
dollars." 

The  caddie  ran,  peeling  his  garments  as  he 
went.  Modestly  retaining  his  tattered  under 
clothes,  he  splashed  in  from  the  tee,  while  the 
somewhat  elderly  golf  player  gesticulated  di 
rections  on  the  bank.  Presently  the  boy's  toes 
detected  something,  and  he  did  a  pretty  surface 
dive,  emerging  with  the  bag  strap  in  his  right 
hand.  He  also  rescued  the  floating  driver,  and 
we  saw  the  promised  bill  passed  to  him,  and 
watched  him  drag  on  his  clothes  over  his  wet 
undergarments.  Slowly,  even  tenderly,  the  some 
what  elderly  gentleman  emptied  the  water  and 
the  stone  from  his  bag,  and  wiped  the  clubs 
on  his  handkerchief.  With  the  wet,  dripping 
burden  over  his  shoulder  he  came  across  the  foot 
bridge  and  into  the  locker  room,  while  we 
hastened  to  remove  our  faces  from  the  door  and 
windows,  and  attempted  to  appear  casual. 

He  entered  in  silence,  and  strode  to  his  locker. 
The  silence  grew  painful.  Somebody  simply  had 
to  speak,  or  laugh.  Finally  somebody  did  speak, 
which  was  probably  the  safer  alternative. 

"Decided  to  try  again,  eh?" 


On  (giving  up  Golf  Forever  107 

The  somewhat  elderly  gentleman  wheeled 
upon  the  assemblage,  his  dripping  bag  still  hang 
ing  from  his  shoulder. 

"Yes,  damn  it!"  he  thundered. 

Well,  I  have  never  thrown  my  clubs  into  a 
pond,  and  I  am  sure  you 'have  never  done  any 
thing  so  childish,  either.  But  how  many  times 
have  you  and  I  both  given  up  golf  forever,  and 
then  returned  to  links  the  following  day — "damn 
it"!  We  do  not  play  for  the  exercise,  we  do  not 
play  because  it  "keeps  us  out  in  the  open  air." 
Neither  motive  would  hold  a  man  for  a  week 
to  the  tantelizing,  costly,  soul-racking,  nerve- 
and  temper-destroying  game.  We  play  it  be 
cause  there  it  some  diabolical — or  celestial — 
fascination  about  the  thing;  some  will-o'-the- 
wisp  of  hope  lures  us  over  swamp  and  swale, 
through  pit  and  pasture,  toward  the  smooth 
haven  of  the  putting  green;  some  subtle,  mys 
terious  power  every  now  and  then  coordinates 
our  muscles  and  lets  us  achieve  perfection  for  a 
single  stroke,  whereafter  we  tingle  with  remem 
brance  and  thrill  with  anticipation.  Golf  is  the 
quest  of  the  unattainable,  it  is  a  manifestation 
of  the  Divine  Unrest,  it  spreads  before  us  the 
soft  green  pathway  down  which  we  follow  the 
Gleam.  That  is  why  you  and  I  shall  be  giving 
it  up  forever  on  our  eightieth  birthday. 


"Qrape-*Uine"  Srudition 

You  may  recall  that  Mr.  Ezra  Barkley  acquired 
a  great  reputation  for  learning  by  imparting  to 
the  spinsters  of  Old  Chester  such  astonishing  fafts 
as  the  approximate  number  of  roe  contained  in 
a  shad.  His  sister-in-law,  in  her  ignorance,  sup 
posed  there  were  only  two  hundred!  Ezra  also 
knew  who  first  kept  bees,  and  many  other  im 
portant  things,  usually  of  a  statistical  nature.  I 
cannot  recall  that  Mrs.  Deland  has  told  us  where 
Ezra  acquired  his  erudition,  and  I  used  at  one 
time  to  wonder.  But  now  I  know.  He  read 
the  "grape-vine"  in  the  first  editions  of  our  daily 
papers. 

Perhaps  you  don't  know  what  "grape-vine"  is? 
I  rejoice  in  my  ability  to  tell  you.  It  is  the  name 
given  by  newspaper  men  to  the  jokes  and  squibs 
and  bits  of  information  clipped  by  the  busy  ex 
change  reader,  and  put  into  type,  making  short 
paragraphs  of  varying  lengths,  which  are  dropped 
in  at  the  bottom  of  a  column  to  fill  up  the  vacant 
space  when  the  need  arises.  This  need  most 
often  arises  in  preparing  the  first  edition,  the  one 
which  catches  the  early  trains  for  the  country. 


Erudition  109 

By  the  time  the  city  edition  goes  to  press  suffi 
cient  news  of  battles,  carnage,  and  sudden  death, 
of  politics  and  stock  exchanges,  has  been  prepared 
to  fill  every  inch  of  available  space.  The  city 
reader,  therefore,  sees  little  of  this  "grape-vine." 
Thus  we  have  a  new  argument  for  country  life. 

I  am  now  a  resident  of  the  country,  one  hun 
dred  and  fifty  miles  removed  from  New  York 
and  as  far  from  Boston;  and  I  am  by  way  of  be 
coming  nearly  as  erudite  as  Ezra  Barkley.  I  am, 
indeed,  almost  bewildered  with  the  mass  of  infor 
mation  I  am  acquiring.  This  morning  I  read  a 
column  about  the  European  war,  all  of  which  I 
have  now  forgotten.  But  how  can  I  ever  forget 
the  two  lines  of  "grape-vine"  at  the  very  bottom 
which  filled  out  an  otherwise  vacant  quarter  inch? 
I  am  permanently  a  wiser  man. 

"Many  Filipino  women  catch  and  sell  fish 
for  a  living." 

Amid  a  world  at  war,  too,  how  peaceful  and 
soothing  is  this  tabloid  idyl  of  piscatorial  toil ! 

After  the  acquisition  of  this  morsel  of  learning 
I  set  diligently  to  work  on  the  day's  papers,  both 
the  morning  editions  and  those  "evening"  edi 
tions  which  come  to  us  here  by  a  train  leav 
ing  the  city  early  in  the  afternoon,  to  see  how 
much  erudition  I  could  accumulate  in  one  sun's 
span.  I  think  you  of  the  cities  will  be  aston 
ished.  I  was  myself.  In  a  few  weeks  I  shall  read 
the  encyclopaedia  advertisements  with  scorn  in- 


no  " grapevine ' '  erudition 

stead  of  longing.  For  instance,  I  have  learned 
that  "A  new  tooth-brush  is  cylindrical  and  is 
revolved  against  the  teeth  by  a  plunger  working 
through  its  spirally  grooved  handle/'  Obviously, 
just  the  implement  for  boys  interested  in  motor 
cars  (as  all  boys  are).  They  will  play  they  are 
grinding  valves  and  run  joyously  to  brush  their 
teeth. 

I  have  learned  that  "In  the  last  five  years  our 
national  and  state  lawmaking  bodies  have  passed 
62,550  laws."  The  surprising  thing  about  this 
information  is  that  the  number  is  so  small ! 

I  have  learned  that  "Russia  has  ten  thousand 
lepers,  taken  care  of  by  twenty-one  institutions." 

I  have  acquired  these  valuable  bits  of  ornitho 
logical  lore:  "The  frigate-bird  is  capable  of  get 
ting  up  a  speed  of  ninety-six  miles  an  hour  with 
hardly  a  movement  of  its  wings.  The  greater 
part  of  its  life  is  spent  in  the  air."  "The  swallow 
has  a  larger  mouth  in  proportion  to  its  size  than 
any  other  bird." 

I  have,  from  the  bottom  of  a  single  column, 
gleaned  these  three  items  of  incalculable  value: 
' '  By  harnessing  a  fly  to  a  tiny  wagon  an  English  sci 
entist  found  it  could  draw  one  hundred  and  seventy 
times  its  own  weight  over  smooth  surfaces." 

"Missouri  last  year  produced  195,634  tons  of 
lead,  a  fairly  heavy  output." 

"The  United  States  has  five  hundred  and  sev 
enteen  button-factories." 


"(^rape-Vine"  Erudition  1 1 1 

The  New  York  Times  staggers  me  with  this 
statistical  line:  "One  Paris  motion-picture  plant 
produces  an  average  of  three  million  feet  of 
films  weekly."  (This  strikes  me  as  a  kind  of 
"French  frightfulness.") 

The  New  York  Evening  Post  contributes  to 
my  welfare  and  domestic  comfort  this  item: 
"Both  an  electric  range  and  a  refrigerator  are 
included  in  a  new  kitchen  cabinet,  but  are  hid 
den  from  view  by  doors  when  not  in  use." 

I  am  certainly  a  wiser  man  for  knowing  that 
"The  Mexican  seacoast  on  the  Pacific  and  the 
Gulf  of  California  is  4,575  miles."  And  I  am 
at  least  interested  in  the  fad:  that  "An  English 
man  has  invented  a  cover  for  hatchways  on  vessels 
that  operates  on  the  principle  of  a  roll-top  desk." 
If  this  hatchway  operates  on  the  principle  of  the 
only  roll-top  desk  I  ever  possessed,  God  help  the 
poor  sailors  when  the  storm  breaks! 

Such  items  as  these  disclose  to  me  the  extent 
of  my  previous  ignorance: — 

"Bolivia  is  producing  about  one-third  of  the 
world's  output  of  tin." 

*  *  Records  disclose  that  for  several  centuries  an 
infusion  of  nutgalls  treated  with  sulphate  of  iron 
composed  the  only  known  ink." 

"The  first  job  held  by  William  G.  McAdoo, 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  was  that  of  a  news 
boy  selling  the  Macon  Morning  Telegraph.  His 
next  job  was  that  of  a  farm  laborer." 


1 1 2  "^rape-Vine"  erudition 

"There  are  2,500,000  freight-cars  in  the 
country,  and  their  average  life  is  somewhere 
about  twenty  years." 

"Since  gold  was  discovered  in  the  Auckland 
province,  in  1852,  there  has  been  exported  from 
that  district  gold  to  the  value  of  $i  16, 796,000." 

I  should,  to  be  sure,  be  more  completely  ed 
ucated  if  I  could  find  somewhere,  under  the 
sporting  news,  or  at  the  base  of  the  obituaries,  a 
statement  of  where  Auckland  is.  But  perhaps 
that  information  will  come  to-morrow. 

Well,  I  have  presented  here  only  a  tithe  of 
the  knowledge  I  have  to-day  gleaned  from  the 
daily  press,  that  hitherto  (by  me,  at  least)  under 
estimated  institution.  I  haven't  stated  that  I  now 
know  who  first  used  anthracite  coal  as  a  fuel,  and 
when.  You  don't  know  that,  I  am  sure.  Neither 
do  you  know  how  many  acres  of  corn  were 
planted  in  England  and  Wales  in  1915  and  1916, 
nor  how  many  government  employees  there  were 
in  France  before  the  war,  nor  that  "A  bundle  of 
fine  glass  threads  forms  a  new  ink-eraser." 

However,  I  must  share  with  you  my  choicest 
acquisition.  It  seems  little  less  than  a  crime  to 
keep  such  knowledge  from  the  world  at  large, 
to  bury  it  at  the  bottom  of  a  column  on  the 
ninth  page  of  the  first  edition  of  the  Springfield 
Republican.  So  I  rewrite  it  here.  For  oral  de 
livery,  I  shall  save  it  till  some  caller  comes 
whom  I  particularly  desire  to  impress.  Then, 


"^rape-Vine"  Erudition  1 1 3 

with  all  the  Old -World  courtesy  of  Mr.  Ezra 
Barkley,  I  shall  offer  this  guest  a  chair,  and  as  I 
do  so  I  shall  remark,  with  the  careless  casualness 
of  the  truly  erudite:  "Guatemala  has  only  one 
furniture  factory.  It  employs  a  hundred  and 
fifty  men." 


'Business  before  Qrammar 

HAVE  just  been  perusing  a  copy  of  a  certain 
magazine  which  proclaims  on  its  cover  that  it 
has  doubled  its  circulation  in  twenty  months. 
Within,  the  editor  sets  forth  what  he  believes 
to  be  the  reasons  for  this  gratifying  growth. 
"The  magazine  accepts  man  as  he  is — and 
helps  him/'  says  the  editor.  "The  magazine 
is  edited  to  answer  the  questions  that  keep  ris 
ing  and  rising  in  the  average  man's  head.  It 
is  not  edited  with  the  idea  of  trying  to  force 
into  the  average  man's  head  a  lot  of  informa 
tion  which  he  does  not  hanker  for  and  cannot 
make  use  of." 

Having  always  considered  ourself  an  average 
man,  we  turned  the  pages  hopefully,  only  to 
find  a  considerable  amount  of  information  we 
had  never  "hankered"  for,  and  could  not  make 
use  of,  as,  for  instance,  how  to  become  the  big 
gest  "buyer"  in  the  universe,  or  how  a  certain 
theatrical  manager  wants  you  to  think  he  thinks 
he  got  on  in  the  world  (there  is,  to  be  sure,  a 
quite  unintentional  psychological  interest  here), 
or  how  to  remember  the  names  of  a  hundred 


^Business  'Before  Grammar  1 1  c 

«y  \J  J 

thousand  people — dreadful  thought!  So  we  de 
cided  we  were  not,  after  all,  an  average  man, 
and  shifted  to  the  fiction. 

There  were  four  short  stories  and  a  serial  in 
this  issue,  and  not  one  of  them  concerned  itself 
with  people  who  could  speak  correct  English. 
Some  of  the  stories  confined  their  assaults  upon 
our  mother  tongue  to  the  dialogue,  one  was  told 
by  a  dog  (which,  of  course,  excuses  much,  in 
prose  as  well  as  verse),  and  one  was  entirely 
written  in  what  we  presume  to  be  a  sort  of 
literary  Bowery  dialed!:,  which  we  have  since 
been  informed  by  friends  more  extensively  read 
than  ourself  is  now  the  necessary  dialed:  of 
American  magazine  humor,  as  essential,  almost, 
as  the  bathing-girl  on  the  August  cover. 

"'I  think  we  got  about  everything.  I'll  see  that  the 
things  is  packed  in  them  wardrobe  trunks  an'  sent  to 
your  hotel  to-morrow  morning.  An'  believe  me,  it's 
been  some  afternoon,  Mr.  Bentley!'" 

— This,  at  random,  from  one  of  the  two  stories 
which  dealt  with  the  "business  woman/'  whose 
motto  seems  to  be,  "Business  Before  Grammar," 
even  as  it  is  the  motto  of  the  editor.  The  other 
"business  woman"  was  not  quite  so  lax.  She 
tried  as  hard  to  speak  correctly  as  the  author 
could  let  her,  and  won  a  certain  amount  of 
sympathy  for  her  efforts. 


1 1 6  business  'Before  Grammar 

But  the  gem,  of  course,  was  the  story  told  all 
in  the  literary  Boweryese.  A  lack  of  acquaint 
ance  with  past  performances  by  our  author  pre 
vented  us  from  feeling  quite  sure  who  the  sup 
posed  narrator  might  be,  without  reading  the 
entire  story,  but  we  gathered  from  early  para 
graphs  and  from  the  illustrations  that  the  guy 
was  a  pug.  (You  see,  it's  contagious.)  At  any 
rate,  this  is  how  the  story  began: — 

"The  average  guy's  opinion  of  himself  reaches  its 
highest  level  about  five  minutes  after  the  most  wonder 
ful  girl  in  the  world  gasps  'Yes!'  He  always  thought 
he  was  a  little  better  than  the  other  voters,  but  now  he 
knows  it!  Of  course,  he  figures,  the  girl  couldn't  very 
well  help  fallin'  for  a  handsome  brute  like  him,  who'd 
have  more  money  than  Rockefeller  if  he  only  knew 
somethin'  about  oil.  He  kids  himself  along  like  that, 
thinkin'  that  it  was  his  curly  hair  or  his  clever  chatter 
that  turned  the  trick.  Them  guys  gimme  a  laugh  ! 

"When  Mamie  Mahoney  or  Gladys  Van  de  Vere 
decides  to  love,  honor  and  annoy  one  of  these  birds, 
she's  got  some  little  thing  in  view  besides  light  house- 
keepin'.  Some  dames  marry  for  spite,  some  because 
they  prefer  limousines  to  the  subway,  and  others  want 
to  make  Joe  stop  playin'  the  races  or  the  rye.  But 
there's  always  somethin'  there — just  like  they  have  to 
put  alloy  in  gold  to  hold  it  together.  Yes,  gentle 
reader,  there's  a  reason! 

"But  if  you're  engaged,  son,  don't  let  this  disturb 
you.  I've  seen  some  dames  that,  believe  me,  I  wouldn't 
care  what  they  married  me  for,  as  long  as  they  did !" 

Having  proceeded  thus  far,  we  turned  back  to 
the  table  of  contents  for  affirmation  of  what  we 


'Business  ^Before  Grammar  117 

vaguely  remembered  to  have  read  there.  Yes, 
we  had  read  it!  The  tale  was  labeled  by  the 
editor,  "A  funny  story." 

So  this  is  fi&ion  for  "the  average  man,"  and 
on  this  spiritual  fare  his  cravings  for  literature 
are  fed!  So  this  is  the  sort  of  thing  which 
doubles  the  circulation  of  a  popular  magazine  in 
twenty  months!  Such  melancholy  reflections 
crossed  our  mind,  coupled  with  the  thought  that 
with  no  speech  at  all  in  the  movies,  and  such 
speech  as  this  in  his  magazines,  the  "average 
man"  will  either  have  to  read  his  Bible  every  day 
or  soon  forget  that  there  was  once  such  a  thing 
as  the  beautiful  English  language.  And  alas,  the 
circulation  of  the  Bible  hasn't  doubled  in  the 
past  twenty  months!  "This  magazine  accepts 
man  as  he  is — and  helps  him" — so  reads  the 
editor's  self-puffery.  What  an  indictment  of  man 
— and  what  an  idea  of  help !  We  would  hate  to 
go  to  bed  with  his  conscience, — if  editors  have 
such  old-fashioned  impediments. 

But  suddenly  we  caught  a  ray  of  light  amid 
the  encircling  gloom.  The  editor  hadn't  stated 
what  his  circulation  was  twenty  months  ago! 
We  recalled  how  Irvin  Cobb  once  told  us  that 
the  attendance  at  his  musical  comedy  had  doubled 
the  previous  evening — the  usher  had  brought 
his  sister.  Doubtless  the  new  circulation  isn't 
more  than  a  million, — and  what  is  a  mere  mil 
lion  nowadays? 


Wood  ^Ashes  and  ^Pr ogress 

"ONCE  man  defended  his  home  and  hearth; 
now  he  defends  his  home  and  radiator."  The 
words  stared  out  of  the  bulk  of  print  on  the  page 
with  startling  vividness,  a  gem  of  philosophy,  a 
"criticism  of  life/'  in  the  waste  of  jokes  which 
the  comic-paper  editor  had  read  and  doubtless 
paid  for,  and  which  the  public  was  doubtless 
expected  to  enjoy.  The  Man  Above  the  Square 
laid  aside  the  paper,  leaned  toward  his  fire,  took 
up  the  poker  (an  old  ebony  cane  adorned  with  a 
heavy  silver  knob  which  bore  the  name  of  anja&or 
once  loved  and  admired)  and  rolled  the  top  log 
over  slowly  and  meditatively.  The  end  of  the 
cane  was  scarred  and  burned  from  many  a  contest 
with  stubborn  logs,  and  the  Man  Above  the 
Square  looked  at  the  marks  of  service  with  a 
smile  before  he  stood  the  heavy  stick  again  in  its 
place  by  the  fireside. 

"It  isn't  every  walking-stick  which  comes  to 
such  a  good  end/'  he  said  aloud. 

Then  either  because  he  was  cold  or  in  peni 
tence  for  the  pun,  he  walked  over  to  the  win 
dows  to  pull  down  the  shades.  But  before  he 


ypood  tAshes  and  Progress  1 1 9 

did  so  he  looked  out  into  the  night,  his  breath 
making  a  frosty  vapor  on  the  pane.  Below  him 
the  Square  gleamed  in  white  patches  under  the 
arc-lamps,  and  across  these  white  patches  here 
and  there  a  belated  pedestrian,  coat  collar  turned 
up,  hurried,  a  black  shadow.  The  cross  on  the 
Memorial  Church  gleamed  like  a  cluster  of  stars, 
and  deep  in  the  cold  sky  the  moon  rode  silently. 
A  chill  wind  was  complaining  in  the  bare  tree- 
tops  beneath  him  and  found  its  way  to  his  face 
and  body  through  the  window  chinks.  He  drew 
down  the  shades  quickly  and  pulled  the  heavy 
draperies  together  with  a  rattle  of  rings  on  the 
rods.  Then  he  turned  and  faced  his  room. 

A  scarf  of  Oriental  silk  veiled  the  light  of  the 
single  lamp,  set  low  on  his  desk,  and  the  fire 
had  its  own  way  with  the  illumination.  It  sent 
dancing  shadows  over  the  olive  walls,  it  made 
points  of  light  of  the  picture-frames  and  a  glowing 
coal  of  the  polished  coffee-urn  in  the  corner; 
it  pointed  pleasantly  out  the  numberless  books, 
but  told  nothing  of  their  contents;  it  made  dark 
the  spaces  where  the  alcoves  were,  but  suffused 
the  little  radius  of  the  hearth  that  was  bounded 
by  an  easy  chair  and  a  pipe-stand  with  a  glow  and 
warmth  and  comfort  which  were  irresistible. 
The  Man  Above  the  Square  came  quickly  into 
this  charmed  radius  and  sank  again  into  the 
chair.  "And  some  people  insist  on  steam  heat!" 
he  said. 


120  "foood  tAshes  and  Progress 

Then  he  looked  into  the  rosy  pit  of  wallow 
ing,  good-natured  flames,  and  fancied  he  was 
meditating.  But  in  reality  he  was  going  to  sleep. 
When  he  woke  up  the  fire  was  out  and  he  was 
cramped  and  cold.  He  stumbled  to  a  corner, 
turned  on  the  steam  in  a  radiator,  that  the  room 
might  be  warm  in  the  morning,  and  returned 
to  his  chamber. 

" After  all,  you  have  to  build  a  fire;  but  the 
steam  just  comes,"  he  growled,  as  he  crawled 
sleepily  into  bed. 

Toward  morning  the  steam  did  come,  but 
some  hours  before  he  was  ready  to  rise.  It  came 
at  intervals,  forcing  the  water  up  ahead  and 
thumping  it  against  the  top  of  the  radiator  with 
the  force  of  a  trip-hammer  and  the  noise  of  a 
cannon.  The  Man  Above  the  Square  woke  up 
and  cursed.  The  intervals  between  thumps  he 
employed  in  wondering  how  soon  the  next  re 
port  would  come,  which  effectively  prevented 
his  going  to  sleep  again.  Presently  the  thump 
ing  ceased,  and  he  dozed  off,  to  awake  later  in 
ugly  temper.  He  went  out  into  the  sitting  room 
and  found  it  cold  as  an  ice-box. 

"Where  in  blazes  is  all  that  steam  which 
woke  me  up  at  daylight?"  he  shouted  down  the 
speaking-tube  to  the  janitor.  The  answer,  as 
usual,  admitted  of  no  reply,  even  as  it  offered 
no  satisfactory  explanation.  He  dug  into  the 
wood-box  and  on  the  heap  of  feathery  white 


'foood  tAshes  and  "Progress  121 

ashes  which  topped  the  pile  in  the  fireplace  like 
snow — ''the  fall  of  last  night"  he  called  it — he 
laid  a  fire  of  pine  and  maple.  In  three  minutes 
he  was  toasting  his  toes  in  front  of  the  blaze,  and 
good  nature  was  spreading  up  his  person  like  the 
tide  up  a  bay. 

"Modern  conveniences  would  be  all  right/' 
he  chuckled,  looking  from  the  merry  fire  to  the 
ugly  radiator,  "if  they  were  ever  convenient!" 

Then  he  swung  Indian  clubs  for  a  quarter  of 
an  hour,  jumped  into  a  cold  plunge,  and  went 
rosy  to  his  breakfast  and  the  day's  work,  with 
the  cheeriness  of  the  fire  in  his  heart. 

But  while  he  was  gone  there  entered  the 
chambermaid,  and  sad  desecration  was  wrought. 
Chambermaids  are  another  modern  inconve 
nience.  The  Pilgrim  Fathers  got  along  without 
chambermaids;  and  even  at  a  much  later  period 
chambermaids  worked  at  least  under  the  super 
vision  of  a  mistress  of  the  household.  But  now 
adays  they  have  their  own  way,  even  in  abodes 
where  there  is  one  who  could  be  a  mistress  if 
she  would,  or  time  from  social  duties  and  the 
improvement  of  her  mind  permitted.  Of  course, 
in  the  abode  of  a  bachelor  the  chambermaid  is 
supreme,  for  bachelors,  at  least  in  New  York, 
have  of  necessity  to  live  in  apartments,  not  pri 
vate  boarding  houses  presided  over  by  a  careful 
mistress.  Probably  most  of  them  prefer  to;  but 
that  does  not  prove  progress,  none  the  less.  But 


122  'foood  *Ashes  and  Progress 

the  Man  Above  the  Square  was  not  of  this  class. 
He  had  a  sharp  elbow  bone,  in  the  first  place, 
which  is  to  signify  that  he  was  a  "good  house 
keeper,"  as  they  say  in  New  England.  And  in 
the  second  place,  he  knew  the  value  to  the 
aesthetic  and  moral  sense  of  personality  in  living 
rooms,  of  an  orderly,  tasteful  arrangement  of 
inanimate  objects,  carpets,  pictures,  furniture, 
which,  through  weeks  of  comparative  change- 
lessness,  takes  on  the  human  aspect  of  a  friend 
and  silently  welcomes  you  when  you  return  at 
night,  saying  comfortably,  "I  am  here,  as  you 
left  me;  I  am  home/' 

So  when  he  entered  his  room  again  that  even 
ing  and  turned  up  the  gas,  his  immediate  utter 
ance  was  not  strictly  the  subject  for  reproduction. 
To  begin  with,  the  chambermaid  had,  in  diso 
bedience  to  his  strict  orders,  taken  up  the  centre 
rug  and  sent  it  up  on  the  roof  for  the  porter  to 
beat.  Being  an  expensive  rug,  the  Man  Above 
the  Square  did  not  particularly  relish  having  it 
frequently  beaten.  But  still  less  did  he  relish  the 
way  it  had  been  replaced.  It  was  not  in  the  cen 
tre  of  the  room,  so  that  two  legs  of  the  library 
desk  in  the  middle  stood  on  the  border  and  two 
on  the  diamond  centre.  One  end  was  too  near 
the  piano,  the  other  consequently  too  far  from 
the  hearth.  And  in  trying  to  tug  it  into  position 
fhe  maid  had  managed  to  pull  every  edge  out 
of  plumb  with  the  lines  of  the  floor.  Of  course, 


IPPood <tAshes  and  Progress  123 

the  photographs  on  the  piano  had  smooches  on 
the  margins,  where  the  maid's  thumb  had  pressed 
as  she  held  them  up  to  dust  beneath.  Pudd'n- 
Head  Wilson  would  alone  have  prized  them  in 
their  present  state.  On  the  mantel  each  objedt 
was  just  far  enough  out  of  its  proper  place  to 
throw  the  whole  decorative  scheme  into  a  line 
of  Puritanic  primness.  And  the  chairs,  silent 
friends  that  are  so  companionable  when  an  un 
derstanding  hand  places  them  in  position,  were 
now  facing  at  stiff  angles  of  armed  neutrality,  as 
if  mutually  suspicious.  Not  one  of  them  said, 
"Sit  in  me." 

But  the  worst  was  yet  to  come.  Walking  over 
to  the  fireplace,  the  Man  Above  the  Square  looked 
in  and  groaned. 

"She's  done  it  again!"  he  cried.  "I'd  move 
out  of  this  flat  to-night  if  I  wasn't  sure  that  any 
other  would  be  as  bad,  this  side  of  the  middle  of 
last  century." 

It  was,  indeed,  a  sorry  piece  of  work.  The 
splendid  pile  of  gray  and  white  wood  ashes 
which  that  morning  had  been  heaped  high  over 
the  arms  of  the  firedogs,  and  which  drifted  high 
into  each  corner  and  out  upon  the  hearth,  was 
no  more.  A  little  pile  remained,  carefully  swept 
into  the  rear  of  the  fireplace,  but  the  bulk  of  the 
ashes  had  been  removed  and  the  arms  of  the 
firedogs  stood  inches  above  what  was  left. 


1 24  Wood  <^4shes  and  ^Progress 

"I  told  her  not  to  do  it;  confound  it  I  I  told 
her  not  to  do  it!"  he  muttered  aloud,  storming 
about  the  room.  "Here  I've  been  since  Christ 
mas  collecting  that  pile  of  ashes,  and  it  had  just 
reached  the  point  where  I  could  kindle  a  tire 
with  three  sticks  of  kindling  and  burn  only  one 
log  if  I  wished.  And  then  that  confounded  cham 
bermaid  disobeys  me — distinctly  disobeys  me — 
and  shovels  it  all  out!" 

He  rang  angrily  for  the  chambermaid,  whose 
name  was  Eliza,  and  who  was  tall  and  angular. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you  under  no  consideration  to 
take  away  any  of  my  ashes?"  he  demanded. 

"But  I  swept  the  room  into  them,  and  they 
got  all  dirty,"  she  protested. 

"Then  don't  sweep  the  room  again!'*  he 
interposed.  "I  want  the  ashes  left  hereafter." 

"But  the  fire  will  burn  better  without  so  many 
ashes;  they  chokes  it,"  said  Eliza.  "Most  peo 
ple  like  'em  cleaned  out  every  week." 

"Most  people  are  fools,"  said  the  Man  Above 
the  Square.  "You  may  go  now." 

The  loss  of  his  ashes  had  so  irritated  him  that 
it  was  a  long  time  before  he  could  yield  himself 
to  the  influence  of  the  blaze,  which  leapt  merrily 
enough,  in  spite  of  the  too  clear  hearth.  He 
filled  his  pipe  and  smoked  it  out  and  filled  it 
again;  he  tried  the  latest  autobiography  and 
Heine's  prose  and  the  current  magazines;  and 
still  his  mind  would  not  settle  to  restfulness  and 


IflPood  zAshes  and  'Progress  125 

content.  Then  suddenly  he  remembered  the 
riate,  the  2oth  of  January.  He  took  down  his 
Keats.  The  owl,  for  all  his  feathers,  might  well 
have  been  a-cold  on  that  night,  too,  for  a  shrill 
wind  was  up  without.  He  glanced  at  his  fire. 
Already  the  kindlings  were  settling  into  glow 
ing  heaps  beneath  the  logs,  a  good  start  on  a 
fresh  pile  of  ashes.  He  snuggled  more  comfort 
ably  into  his  chair  and  began  once  more  the 
deathless  poem. 

The  clock  ticked  steadily;  the  wind  sent 
crashing  down  the  limb  of  an  elm  tree  outside 
and  shrieked  exultingly;  a  log  settled  into  the 
fire  with  a  hiss  and  crackle  of  sparks.  But  he 
heard  nothing.  Presently  he  laid  the  book  aside, 
for  the  poem  was  finished,  and  looked  into  the 
fire.  It  was  sometimes  a  favorite  question  of  his 
to  inquire  who  ate  Madeline's  feast,  a  point 
which  Keats  leaves  in  doubt;  but  he  did  not  ask 
it  to-night. 

"Yes,  it  was  ages  long  ago/'  he  said  at  length. 
"Ages  long  ago!" 

Then  he  leaned  forward,  poking  the  fire 
meditatively, 'and  added:  "Steam  heat  in  Made 
line's  chamber?  Impossible!  But  there  might 
have  been  just  such  another  fire  as  this!" 

And  was  it  a  sudden   thought,  "like  a  full 
blown  rose,"  making  "purple  riot"  in  his  breast, 
too,  or  was  it  simply  the  leap  of  the  firelight, 
which  caused  his  face  to  flush? 


126  Wood  zAshes  and  ^Progress 

"I  wonder  where  they  are  now?"  he  whis 
pered.  'They  are  together  in  the  arms  of 
death/  a  later  poet  says.  But  surely  the  world 
has  not  so  far  'progressed'  that  they  do  not  live 
somewhere  still." 

Then  he  recalled  a  visit  he  once  made  to  a 
young  doctor  in  a  fine  old  New-England  village. 
The  doctor  was  not  long  out  of  college,  and  he 
had  brought  his  bride  to  this  little  town,  to  an 
old  house  rich  in  tiny  window  panes,  uneven 
floors  and  memories.  Great  fireplaces  supplied 
the  heat  for  the  doctor  and  his  wife,  as  it  had 
done  for  the  occupants  who  looked  forth  from 
the  windows  to  see  the  soldiery  go  by  on  their 
way  to  join  Washington  at  the  siege  of  Boston. 
And  when  the  Man  Above  the  Square  came  on 
his  visit  he  found  in  the  fireplace  which  warmed 
the  low-studded  living  room,  that  was  library  and 
drawing  room  as  well,  a  heap  of  ashes  more  than 
a  foot  high,  on  which  the  great  cordwood  sticks 
roared  merrily. 

The  doctor  and  his  wife,  sitting  down  before 
the  blaze,  pointed  proudly  to  this  heap  of  ashes, 
and  the  do6tor  said,  "I  brought  Alice  to  this 
house  a  year  ago,  on  the  day  of  our  wedding, 
and  we  kindled  a  fire  here,  on  the  bare  hearth. 
Since  then  not  a  speck  of  ashes  has  been  re 
moved,  except  little  bits  from  the  front  when  the 
carpet  was  invaded.  That  pile  of  ashes  is  the 
witness  to  our  year-long  honeymoon." 


^ood  zAshes  and  Progress  127 

Then  Alice  smiled  fondly  into  the  rosy  glow, 
herself  more  rosy,  and  they  kissed  each  other 
quite  unaffectedly. 

The  Man  Above  the  Square,  when  his  memory 
reached  this  point,  let  the  ebony  poker  slide  from 
his  grasp.  "Ah!"  he  exclaimed,  "her  name  was 
really  Madeline!" 

Again  he  looked  into  the  fire.  "Could  the 
ashes  have  been  preserved  if  Madeline  had  not 
given  the  matter  her  personal  attention,  but  had 
trusted  to  a  housemaid?"  he  thought.  What 
further  reflections  this  question  inspired  must  be 
left  to  conjecture.  He  did  not  speak  again. 

But  presently  he  got  up,  went  to  his  desk, 
and  wrote  a  letter.  He  was  a  long  time  about 
it,  consulting  frequently  with  the  fire  and  smil 
ing  now  and  then.  When  it  was  done  he  took 
it  at  once  to  the  elevator  to  be  mailed.  Perhaps 
he  thought  it  unsafe  to  wait  the  turning  of  the 


T*he  'Vacant  Ttyom  in 

I  AM  content  to  let  Mr.  John  Corbin  sing  the 
praises  of  the  stage  without  scenery;  I  prefer  to 
sing  the  praises  of  the  stage  without  actors.  Ever 
since  I  was  a  little  boy,  nothing  in  the  world 
has  been  for  me  so  full  of  charm  and  suggestive- 
ness  as  an  empty  room.  I  remember  as  vividly 
as  though  it  were  week  before  last  being  brought 
home  from  a  visit  somewhere,  when  I  was  four 
years  old,  and  arriving  after  dark.  My  mother 
had  difficulty  in  finding  the  latch-key  in  her  bag 
(I  have  since  noted  that  this  is  a  common  trait 
of  women),  and  while  the  search  was  going  on 
I  ran  around  the  corner  of  the  house  and  peered 
in  one  of  the  low  windows  of  the  library.  The 
moonlight  lay  in  two  oblong  patches  on  the 
floor;  and  as  I  pressed  my  nose  against  the  pane 
and  gazed,  the  familiar  objects  within  gradually 
emerged  from  the  gloom,  as  if  a  faint,  invisible 
light  were  being  turned  slowly  up  by  an  invisi 
ble  hand.  Nothing  seemed,  however,  as  it  did 
by  day,  but  everything  took  on  a  new  and  mys 
terious  significance  that  bewildered  me.  I  think 
it  must  also  have  terrified  me,  for  I  recall  my 


The  'Vacant  T^oom  in  'Drama  1 29 

father's  carrying  me  suddenly  into  the  glare  of 
the  hall,  and  saying,  "What's  the  matter  with 
the  boy?"  And  to-day  I  cannot  enter  a  theatre, 
even  at  the  prosaic  hour  of  ten  in  the  morning, 
when  the  chairs  are  covered  with  cloths  and 
maids  are  dusting,  when  the  house  looks  very 
small  and  the  unlit  and  unadorned  stage  very  like 
a  barn,  without  a  thrill  of  imaginative  pleasure. 
I  have  even  mounted  the  stage  of  an  empty 
theatre  and  addressed  with  impassioned,  sound 
less  words  the  deeply  stirred,  invisible,  great  audi 
ence,  rising  row  on  row  to  the  roof.  At  such 
moments  I  have  experienced  the  creative  joy  of 
a  mighty  orator  or  a  sublime  adior;  I  have  actu 
ally  felt  my  pulses  leap.  And  then  the  entrance 
of  a  stage-hand  or  a  scrub-woman  would  shatter 
the  illusion! 

But  it  is  when  I  am  one  of  a  real  audience, 
and  the  stage  is  disclosed  set  with  scenery  but 
barren  of  players,  that  I  derive,  perhaps,  the 
keenest  pleasure.  A  few  playwrights  have  rec 
ognized  the  power  of  the  vacant  room  in 
drama,  but  on  the  whole  the  opportunities  for 
such  enjoyment  are  far  too  rare.  This  is  odd, 
too,  with  such  convincing  examples  at  hand. 
There  is,  for  instance,  the  close  of  the  second 
act  of  T)ie  <L%Ceister  singer,  when  the  watchman 
passes  through  the  sleepy  town  after  the  street 
brawl  is  over,  and  then  the  empty,  moon-bathed 
street  lies  quiet  for  a  time,  before  the  curtain 

10 


13°  The  Vacant  cl^oom  in  'Drama 

closes.  Of  course,  here  there  is  music  to  aid  in 
creating  the  poetic  charm  and  soothing  repose 
of  that  moment.  But  at  the  end  of  Shore  Acres 
there  was  no  such  aid.  Who  that  saw  it,  how 
ever,  can  forget  that  final  picture?  After  Nat 
Berry — played  by  Mr.  Herne,  the  author — had 
scratched  a  bit  of  frost  off  the  window-pane  to 
peer  out  into  the  night,  locked  the  door,  and 
banked  the  fire,  he  climbed  with  slow,  aged 
footsteps  up  the  stairs  to  bed.  At  the  landing 
he  turned  to  survey  the  old  kitchen  below,  that 
lay  so  cozy  and  warm  under  the  benediction  of 
his  eye.  Then  he  disappeared  with  his  candle, 
and  the  stage  grew  quite  dim,  save  for  the  red 
glow  from  the  fire.  Yet  the  curtain  did  not  fall; 
and  through  a  mist  of  tears,  tears  it  cleansed 
one's  soul  to  shed,  the  audience  looked  for  a 
long,  hushed  moment  on  the  scene,  on  the  now 
familiar  room  where  so  much  of  joy  and  grief 
had  happened, — deserted,  tranquil,  but  suddenly, 
in  this  new  light  of  emptiness,  realized  to  be 
how  vital  a  part  of  the  lives  of  those  people  who 
had  made  the  play!  It  used  to  seem,  indeed, 
as  if  the  drama  had  not  achieved  full  reality 
until  the  old  kitchen  had  thus  had  its  say,  thus 
spoken  the  epilogue. 

It  is  strange  to  me  that  more  playwrights 
have  not  profited  by  such  examples.  The  cry 
of  the  average  playgoer  is  for  " action,"  to  be 
sure;  but  even  "action"  may  be  heightened  by 


The  'Vacant  T{oom  in  'Drama  131 

contrast,  by  peace  and  serenity.  Certainly  the 
vitality,  the  illusion,  of  a  scenic  background  on 
the  stage  can  be  enhanced  by  drawing  a  certain 
amount  of  attention  to  it  alone;  and  something 
as  Mr.  Hardy,  in  The  Return  of  the  Native, 
paints  Egdon  Heath — "Haggard  Egdon" — in 
its  shifting  moods  before  he  introduces  a  single 
human  being  upon  the  scene  of  their  coming 
tragedy,  it  is  quite  possible  for  the  modern  play 
wright,  with  an  artist  to  aid  him,  to  show  the 
audience  the  scene  of  his  drama,  to  let  its  sug 
gestive  beauty,  its  emotional  possibilities,  charm 
or  fire  their  fancies  before  the  speech  and  ac 
tion  begin.  So  also,  as  Wagner  and  Mr.  Herne 
have  demonstrated,  there  can  be  a  climax  of  the 
vacant  stage.  I  look  to  the  new  stage-craft  to 
develop  such  possibilities. 


On  Qiving  an  ^Author  a  "Plot 

IHERE  are  two  people  who  annoy  an  author 
more  than  any  others — the  person  who  calmly 
supposes  that  everything  he  writes  is  biographi 
cal,  or  even  autobiographical,  and  the  person  who 
declares,  "I've  got  a  dandy  plot  for  you" — and 
proceeds  to  tell  it. 

The  first  person,  of  course,  is  annoying,  be 
cause  an  author's  stories  always  are  either  bio 
graphical  or  autobiographical,  and  he  never  cares 
to  admit,  even  to  himself,  how  true  this  is.  To 
be  sure,  his  characters  are  composites,  and  his 
self-revelations  are  rather  possibilities  (or  even, 
alas,  Freudian  wishes!)  than  records  of  actuality. 
But  fancy  trying  to  explain  that  to  a  gushing 
female  who  has  developed  a  sudden  passion  for 
calling  on  your  wife,  and  is  heard  to  remark, 
"Oh,  is  that  where  he  writes  ?"  as  you  flee  by  a 
back  door,  down  the  garden! 

The  second  person  is  annoying  not  so  much 
because  most  of  the  "dandy  plots"  that  he  or  she 
tells  are  hoary  with  age,  or  even  because  most 
writers  don't  start  with  a  'plot'  at  all,  and  couldn't 
define  a  plot  if  they  had  to;  but  rather  because  a 


On  (jiving  an  ^Author  a  'Plot  133 

writer,  however  humble,  has  to  feel  the  idea  for 
a  story  come  glowing  up  over  the  horizon  of  his 
brain  out  of  the  east  of  his  own  subconscious- 
ness,  or  it  is  never  his,  it  never  acquires  the  nec 
essary  warmth  to  interest  him,  the  color  and 
light  to  make  it  real.  This  is  a  curious  fad:,  and 
one  which  your  modest  writer  shrinks  from  try 
ing  to  explain  to  his  well-meaning  friend,  lest 
he  seem  egotistical.  Only  the  blessed  publicity 
of  print  could  draw  him  out.  Yet  the  psychol 
ogy  involved  perhaps  deserves  some  attention. 

Suppose  it  is  my  common  method,  in  writing 
a  story,  to  start  from  some  social  situation  which 
illumines  a  strata  of  life;  suppose,  let  us  assume, 
that  I  am  present  at  a  dinner  party  where  a  rad 
ical  has  got  in  by  mistake  and  says  something 
which  profoundly  shocks  some  capitalistic  pirate 
who  honestly  feels  himself  a  pillar  of  law  and 
order,  and  in  this  situation  I  see  an  irony  which 
gradually  demands  fictional  expression,  as  im 
agined  characters  and  more  extensive  clashes  be 
gin  to  shape  in  my  brain.  There  you  have  a  not 
at  all  impossible  evolution  of  a  story.  But  now 
suppose  that  instead  of  my  being  present  at  this 
party,  a  friend  had  been  present,  quite  as  alive  as 
I  to  the  ironies  of  the  situation,  and  suppose  my 
friend  later  repeated  the  incident  to  me  —  why 
should  it  not  serve  me  just  as  well,  why  should 
it  not  start  the  fictional  urge,  the  gestation  of 
character  and  incident? 


134  On  (jiving  an  ^Author  a  T*!ot 

Generalizing  is  dangerous  work.  Of  course, 
there  may  be  authors  in  whom  it  would  start 
the  process.  But  I  have  never  known  one.  Even 
in  so  exceptional  a  case  as  this  —  of  course,  the 
usual  friendly  suggestion  has  no  real  meat  of 
fiction  in  it  at  all  —  something  is  lacking  to  fire 
the  imagination.  It  is  exactly  as  if  your  nose 
were  called  upon  to  sense,  or  your  retina  to  im 
age,  an  odor  or  a  scene  described  to  you  and  not 
directly  experienced.  Your  brain  accepts  the  de 
scription,  but  there  is  no  warmth  in  the  reaction, 
no  tingle  of  life.  Just  so,  it  would  almost  seem, 
the  conception  for  a  story,  a  poem,  no  doubt  for 
a  picture,  too,  or  a  strain  of  music,  is  something 
less,  or  more,  than  merely  mental;  it  is  in  some 
subtle  way  sensory,  as  if  the  brain  had  fingers 
which  must  themselves  touch  the  thing  directly 
to  get  the  feel  of  it.  Is  it  not,  perhaps,  this  fact 
which  has  caused  so  many  artists,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  to  believe  in  "inspiration"? 

The  singing  line  walks  from  nowhere  into 
the  poet's  head,  the  perfect  situation  comes  to 
the  writer  of  fiction  when  he  is  least  expecting 
it.  To  take  a  humble  example,  I  was  once  sit 
ting  in  an  editor's  office,  listening  while  he  ex 
pounded  to  me  a  grand  "plot"  for  a  series  of 
stories.  I  looked  across  the  street  from  his  win 
dow  to  avoid  his  eyes,  lest  I  should  show  my 
lack  of  appreciation,  and  there  beheld  a  slight 
incident  which  I  instantly  knew  was  a  starting- 


On  (jiving  an  ^Author  a  "Plot  135 

point.  It  turned  out  to  be  worth  a  year's  income 
to  me.  Yet,  to  a  merely  impersonal  judgment, 
the  editor's  idea  was  more  interesting  and  worth 
while  than  mine.  Only  it  wasn't  mine;  that's 
the  point.  It  was  foreign  born,  and  could  never 
become  a  citizen  of  my  mental  commonwealth. 
I  have  not  quite  reached  the  pitch  of  calling  my 
ideas  inspirations,  but  I  long  ago  recognized  that 
unless  they  were  my  ideas  from  the  dim  days 
before  their  birth  they  could  never  be  mine,  and 
it  was  only  a  waste  of  time  to  wrestle  with  them. 
So  when  a  friend  declares  he  has  a  dandy  plot 
for  me,  I  summon  what  patience  I  may  and  pre 
tend  to  listen,  while  planning  a  better  succession 
of  perennials  for  next  year's  garden,  or  mentally 
reviewing  the  prospecl  of  cutting  three  strokes 
off  my  golf  score. 


The  Twilight  Veil 

NEW  YORK!  How  few  of  us  call  it  home!  We 
have  been  sucked  into  it,  as  into  a  whirlpool, 
and  as  we  spin  round  and  round  on  its  mighty 
unrest  our  hearts  and  fancies  find  repose  in 
memory — the  memory  of  an  old  New  England 
village,  or  a  corn  field  and  a  split-rail  fence  and 
then  the  level  prairie,  or  cotton  fields  and  the 
red  handkerchiefs  of  the  negroes,  or  the  vineyard 
slopes  of  Sicily,  or  the  great  white  surf  beating  up 
the  cliffs  of  Connemara.  It  may  be  that  the  second 
and  third  generations  of  immigrants,  born  on  the 
East  Side,  are  true  New  Yorkers,  just  as  a  van 
ishing  generation  of  elderly  men  and  women  on 
Murray  Hill  and  the  Avenue  are  true  New  York 
ers.  But  the  great  majority  of  New  York's  five 
millions  cherish  in  their  hearts  either  the  memory 
or  the  hope  of  some  spot  far  away  to  which  they 
give  the  allegiance  of  home  love.  Ours  is  a  curi 
ous  city  in  that  respe6t.  Perhaps,  indeed,  it  is  a 
fortunate  one.  Without  such  memory  or  such 
hope,  the  flat-dwelling  imposed  on  most  New 
Yorkers  by  economic  necessity  would  be  a  deadly 
thing — or  shall  we  say,  a  more  deadly  thing? 


The  Twilight  Veil  137 

If  you  desire  a  curious  experience,  go  into  a 
New  York  club  like  the  Yale  or  Harvard  or 
Players'  club,  and  colledt  a  dozen  men  at  random, 
asking  each  for  a  little  word-sketch  of  his  child 
hood  home.  Seldom  enough  will  the  scene  of 
that  sketch  be  in  New  York  City,  and  you  will 
probably  be  surprised  to  find  how  infrequently 
it  will  be  in  any  city.  A  kind  of  urban  con 
sciousness  gets  complete  possession  of  us  after 
we  have  lived  long  on  Manhattan  Island,  and 
we  are  prone  to  forget  what  a  geographically 
tiny  spot  it  is.  We  forget  the  country.  It  comes 
as  a  surprise  when  we  discover  how  many  of 
our  fellows  were,  like  us,  country  bred.  We  are 
still  a  nation,  at  bottom,  of  little  white  dwelling 
houses,  if  not  any  longer  of  little  white  school 
houses.  (I  know  the  phrase  is  little  red  school 
houses,  only  they  never  were  red,  but  white!) 
This  is  probably  one  reason  why  our  aesthetic 
sense  is  not  adjusted  to  find  more  beauties  than 
we  do  in  the  physical  aspects  of  New  York  City. 
Deep  in  our  consciousness,  if  not  rather  our  sub- 
consciousness,  lies  the  ache  for  green  vistas  and 
gardens,  for  low  sky  lines  and  quiet  streets. 
When  we  speak  of  the  pidiuresque  in  New 
York,  we  most  often  refer  (aside  from  the  ob 
viously  striking  aspe6t  of  the  lower  city  from 
the  harbor)  to  the  old  brick  houses  on  Washing 
ton  Square  or  the  quaint  streets  of  Greenwich 
Village.  Yet  we  do  both  the  city  and  ourselves 


138  The  Tw ilig ht  Ve il 

an  injustice  by  this  more  or  less  unconscious 
attitude.  Let  us  consider  picturesque  to  mean 
what  is  shaped  by  chance  and  the  play  of  light 
into  a  beautiful  picture,  and,  if  we  but  walk  the 
town  with  eyes  upraised  and  open,  we  shall  see 
the  picturesque  on  every  side. 

There  is  the  Plaza  Hotel,  for  example. 
Every  New  Yorker  and  every  visitor  to  New 
York  knows  it, — a  great,  white,  naked  sky-scraper, 
with  a  green  hip-roof,  rising  close  to  the  Park 
and  St.  Gaudens'  golden  bronze  of  General 
Sherman.  But  how  many  know  that  it  is  prob 
ably  the  one  sky-scraper  in  the  world  which 
can  gaze  at  its  own  reflection  in  still  water,  and 
that  to  the  spectator  looking  at  it  over  this  water- 
mirror  it  becomes  a  gigantic  but  ethereal  Jap 
anese  design,  even  to  the  pine  limb  flung  across 
the  upper  corner? 

They  say  there  is  an  hour  at  twilight  when 
all  men  appear  noble,  and  all  women  beautiful. 
Certainly  there  is  such  a  twilight  hour  when 
New  York  City  is  veiled,  oftimes,  in  loveliness; 
and  most  lovely  at  this  hour  is  the  Plaza  mirrored 
in  the  pool.  The  view  is  not  easy  to  find,  un 
less  you  are  one  of  those  who  know  your  Cen 
tral  Park.  But  a  little  searching  will  uncover 
it.  You  will  see  in  the  southeast  corner  of  the 
Park  a  lake,  and  just  beyond  this  lake  you  will 
find  a  path  turning  west.  That  path  leads  to  a 
stone  bridge  over  a  northward-stretching  inlet 


The  Twilight  Veil  139 

of  the  pond.  Cross  the  bridge  a  few  paces  and 
turn  your  face  to  the  south.  At  your  feet  the 
bank  goes  down  sharply  to  the  still,  dark  water. 
Across  the  pond  the  bank  rises  steep  and  rocky, 
covered  with  thick  shrubbery  and  trees.  Shoot 
ing  up  apparently  out  of  these  trees  is  the  white 
wall  of  the  Plaza,  three  hundred  feet  into  the 
air,  and  down  into  the  water  sinks  its  still  reflec 
tion,  to  an  equal  depth.  It  rises  alone,  open  sky 
to  left  and  right,  and  there  is  just  room  in  the 
lake  for  its  replica.  The  picture  is  impressive 
by  day,  but  as  twilight  begins  to  steal  over  the 
scene,  as  the  sky  takes  on  a  pearly  softness,  and 
the  shadows  creep  through  the  trees  in  the  Park, 
and  the  lights  in  half  the  windows  up  that  white 
cliff"  wall  begin  to  gleam  in  golden  squares,  the 
great  building  becomes  curiously  ethereal,  the 
pine  limb  flung  into  the  foreground  of  the  de 
sign  catches  the  eye,  the  reflection  in  the  water  is 
as  real  as  the  reality.  The  Plaza,  monstrous  tons 
of  steel  and  stone,  floats  between  two  elements. 
Then  darkness  gathers,  the  reflected  lights  in  the 
blackening  water  grow  more  golden,  and  sud 
denly,  perhaps,  a  duck  swims  across  a  tenth  story 
window  and  sets  it  dancing  in  golden  ripples. 
You  may  fare  far  among  the  ancient  and  "pic 
turesque"  cities  of  the  earth  without  finding  a 
rival  for  this  strange  bit  of  beauty  in  New  York, 
an  ethereal  sky-scraper  in  white  and  gold  gazing 
at  its  own  reflection  in  the  forest  pool! 


140  The  Twilight  Veil 

Twilight  in  the  Park,  indeed,  converts  more 
than  one  building  into  a  thing  of  beauty,  and 
the  Plaza  into  a  thing  of  beauty  from  more  than 
one  view.  For  instance,  as  you  pass  into  the 
Park,  seeking  the  spot  we  have  described,  turn 
back  before  you  have  advanced  far,  and  see  the 
great  cliff  wall  going  up  beyond  the  slender  trac 
ery  of  young  trees,  with  the  street  lights,  just 
turned  on,  making  a  level  strip  of  golden  shim 
mer  at  its  base,  curiously  suggestive  of  crowds 
and  gaiety.  There  is  at  all  hours  a  certain  charm 
to  be  found  in  the  long  line  of  high  hotels  and 
apartment  houses  which  line  the  Park  to  the 
west,  when  you  view  them  over  treetops,  rock 
ledges,  and  running  brooks,  or  over  white  fields 
of  snow.  It  is  as  if  the  city  had  crested  in  a  great 
wave  along  the  green  shore  of  the  country,  ready 
to  curl  and  fall  and  dash  onward,  but  had  been 
suddenly  arrested  by  some  more  potent  King 
Canute.  Loveliness,  however,  is  hardly  a  word 
you  would  apply  till  twilight  steals  across  the 
scene.  Down  side  streets  into  the  west  the  gol 
den  sunset  glows  for  a  time,  and  the  hadows  on 
the  snow  are  amethyst.  Then  the  glow  fades. 
The  arc  lamps  come  on  with  a  splutter,  and  they, 
too,  at  first  are  amethyst.  But  in  the  gathering 
dark  they  change  to  blue.  The  sky  changes  to 
the  deep  blue  of  approaching  night.  The  dim 
bulks  of  the  buildings  change  to  blue.  The 
shadows  about  you  are  but  a  deeper  blue.  Even 


The  Twilight  Veil  141 

the  snow  at  your  feet  is  blue.  In  the  great  apart 
ments  and  hotels  the  golden  window  squares  ap 
pear,  and  the  looming  procession  of  blue  shadow 
bulks  might  be  a  fleet  of  giant  liners  going  by 
you  in  the  night. 

There  is  always  a  mystery  and  poignant  charm 
about  our  parks  in  New  York,  if  you  let  them 
have  their  way  with  your  imagination,  which 
you  do  not  find  in  other  parks  intrinsically,  per 
haps,  more  beautiful.  No  doubt  this  comes  from 
violent  contrast  between  our  city  and  the  hush 
and  peace  of  trees.  Our  streets  are  all  treeless, 
and  our  great  heave  of  masonry  comes  up  to  the 
very  edge  of  our  green  oases.  Even  the  smaller 
parks  which  fill  but  a  block  or  two,  when  twi 
light  enfolds  them,  blurring  the  harsher  outlines 
and  conjuring  out  the  shadows,  can  captivate  the 
senses.  If  you  chance  to  wander  in  Brooklyn — 
which  no  self-respeding  inhabitant  of  Manhat 
tan  permits  himself  to  do  except  under  compul- 
sing! — you  may  come  upon  Fort  Greene  Park 
when  the  evening  shadows  are  stealing  down  the 
streets  to  meet  you,  and  the  Martyrs'  Monument 
strangely  converted  into  a  pagan  altar,  silhouet 
ted  against  the  sky  amid  its  guardian  druid  grove 
wherein  the  lamps  glow  and  twinkle  and  dark 
figures  move  mysteriously. 

But  it  is  not  even  necessary  to  enter  the  parks 
of  New  York  to  find  the  pi&uresque  and  lovely. 
Such  open  areas  as  Washington  and  Madison 


142  The  Twilight  Veil 

Squares  hold  varying  aspects  of  beauty  and  im 
aginative  suggestion,  from  sunrise  to  moonset. 
Large  enough  to  admit  the  play  of  light  and  to 
blur  a  bit  the  building  lines  at  their  further  side, 
these  squares  reward  the  seeing  eye  with  many 
an  unguessed  delight. 

For  ten  years  my  rooms  were  six  stories  up 
on  the  east  side  of  Washington  Square,  and  for 
ten  years,  at  all  seasons  and  all  hours,  I  walked 
daily  up-town  through  Madison  Square  to  the 
Rialto,  and  back  again.  I  have  often  regretted 
that  I  kept  no  note-book  of  the  changing  aspects 
of  these  two  oases,  as  one  keeps  a  note-book  of 
the  seasons  in  the  country.  Spring  comes  in 
Washington  and  Madison  Squares  with  signs  no 
less  unmistable  than  the  hepaticas  by  the  wood 
land  road.  The  western  wall  of  the  Flatiron 
Building  has  its  autumnal  colorings;  and  though 
the  first  snow  fall  may  be  black  mud  by  noon,  at 
sun-up  those  brick-bounded  areas  laugh  in  white 
and  the  aged  trees  arch  their  fantastic  tracery. 

Spring  in  the  Square!  The  central  fountain 
is  playing  again  its  rainbow  jet  of  spray,  the  tulips 
are  a  jaunty  ring  about  it,  the  benches  have  put 
forth  a  strange,  sad  foliage  of  humanity  (you 
must  not  think  too  much  of  the  benches  nor 
look  at  them  too  long!),  the  shrill  children  are 
everywhere,  the  green  'busses  are  gay  with  sight 
seers  atop,  and  as  you  stand  by  the  fountain  and 
look  northward  through  the  Washington  Arch, 


The  Twilight  Veil  143 

you  see  that  an  amazing  thing  has  come  to  pass. 
The  great  arch  spans  the  vista  of  the  Avenue, 
lined  here  with  red  brick  dwellings  and  the 
sunny  white  bulk  of  the  old  Brevoort  House. 
Far  off,  the  sky-scrapers  begin  to  loom,  whip 
ping  out  flags  and  steam  plumes.  It  is  a  treeless 
vista,  yet  it  is  hazed  with  spring!  Imagination, 
you  scoff — and  dust.  Yet  you  look  again,  and 
it  is  not  imagination,  and  it  is  not  dust.  It  is 
the  veil  of  spring,  cast  with  delicate  hand  over 
the  city.  These  laughing  sight-seers  atop  the 
green  'bus  now  going  under  the  arch  feel  it, 
too.  These  children  screaming  round  your  feet, 
as  they  dash  through  the  wind-borne  fountain 
spray,  are  aware  of  it.  There  is  an  answering 
benignity  in  the  calm,  red  brick  dwellings  up 
the  vista  of  the  Avenue.  Wait  for  a  few  hours, 
let  the  sun  sink  behind  the  heights  of  Hoboken, 
and  then  wander  once  more  into  the  Square. 
Twilight,  a  warm,  balmy  twilight,  is  upon  your 
spirit.  Look  through  the  arch  southward  now. 
There  is  still  plenty  of  light  left  in  the  sky,  but 
the  great,  springing,  Roman  masonry  is  dusky. 
It  frames  the  sweeping  curve  of  the  asphalt 
around  the  fountain,  and  beyond  that  the  Judson 
Memorial  tower,  graceful,  Italian,  bearing  its 
eledtric  cross  against  the  failing  day  like  a  cluster 
of  timid  evening  stars.  It  is  a  tower  from  the 
plains  of  Lombardy,  or  from  an  island  in  the 
Tiber,  seen  through  an  arch  of  ancient  Rome. 


144  T&e  Twilight  Veil 

Do  you  objed:  to  that  in  an  American  city?  I 
cannot  argue  the  point.  I  only  know  that  when 
I  see  them  so,  the  one  framing  the  other,  in  the 
spring  twilight,  or  in  the  early  dusk  of  a  winter 
day,  my  heart  is  very  glad,  and  my  spirit  feels 
a  touch  of  that  peace  and  calm  the  poet  felt 
among  the  Roman  ruins, 

"  Where  the  quiet-colored  end  of  evening  smiles 
Miles  on  miles " 

How  often  in  New  York  it  is  a  tower  which 
gathers  the  picture  together!  Ours  is  a  city  of 
towers.  We  hide  Trinity  spire  in  a  well,  and 
Henry  Arthur  Jones,  the  playwright,  once  com 
plained  that  the  windows  of  his  hotel  room  on 
the  Avenue  looked  down  upon  the  pinnacle  of 
a  church  steeple.  Yet  our  towers  rise  just  the 
same,  new  ones  leaping  up  as  far  above  the  new 
three-hundred-foot  sky-line  as  Trinity  steeple 
once  lifted  above  lower  Broadway.  We  aspire 
still.  Nor  is  the  old  Judson  tower  on  Washing 
ton  Square  yet  dwarfed.  How  many  red  sunsets 
have  I  seen  glow  through  its  belfry  windows, 
while  the  tower  itself  was  a  black  silhouette 
against  the  sky,  and  down  in  the  shadowy  Square 
the  night  lamps  began  to  come  out,  or  the  as 
phalt,  drenched  by  a  shower,  shone  as  if  molten 
copper  had  been  rained  upon  it!  In  how  many 
deep,  starlit  nights  have  I  thrown  open  my  win 
dow  for  a  fresher  breath  and  a  moment  of  medi- 


The  Twilight  Veil  145 

tation,  to  see  the  deserted  Square  below  me,  its 
white  arch  faintly  gleaming  in  the  radiation  of 
the  arc  lamps,  the  long  stretch  of  city  roofs  be 
yond,  the  twinkling  lamps  on  the  far  heights  of 
Hoboken,  and  there  in  the  centre  of  the  picture 
the  dark,  silent  tower,  keeping  quiet  watch  and 
bearing  its  steady  cross  like  a  star-cluster  in  the 
night!  Many  a  time  I  have  gone  to  bed  with  its 
beautiful  image  behind  my  eyelids. 

The  Metropolitan  tower  in  Madison  Square 
is  less  intimate.  It  has  its  moods,  but  they  are 
the  moods  of  the  mountain.  It  has  dwarfed  the 
graceful,  Spanish  tower  of  the  Madison  Square 
Garden,  without  a  doubt,  and  taken  the  proud 
Diana  down  a  peg.  But  there  are  compensations 
in  its  mightiness.  Have  you  ever  seen  it  on  a 
f°ggy  ^ay  &°'m&  UP  out  °f  signt  into  the  driving 
vapors?  Have  you  stood  in  ancient  Gramercy 
Park — still  a  bit  of  the  old,  domestic  New  York 
of  the  '/o's — and  seen  it  booming  up  over  the 
red  brick  dwellings,  white  and  confident  into  the 
sun?  Have  you  ever  come  down  through  Madi 
son  Square  late  at  night,  when  the  relic  of  a 
moon  was  rising  behind  the  tower,  and  the 
ghostly  shaft  stood  up  tremendous  against  the 
pale,  racing  cloud-rack?  Have  you  seen  it  with 
the  last  pink  glow  of  sunset  upon  it,. and  upon 
the  western  wall  of  the  Flatiron  Building,  and 
upon  nothing  else,  all  lower  buildings  being  in 
shadows  of  obscuring  twilight?  That  is  one  of 


n 


146  The  Twilight  Veil 

its  delicate  mountian  moods,  when  it  seems  to 
lift  above  our  earth-bound  vision  and  look  over 
those  western  cloud  ranges  into  the  Land  Be 
yond  the  Sunset. 

Have  you  seen  it,  too,  down  Madison  Avenue 
in  the  mysterious  twilight  hour  of  blue  and  gold 
when  all  New  York  is  beautiful?  The  street 
lamps  have  come  on;  the  dark  figures  of  home- 
going  pedestrians  hurry  past  you;  there  are  lamps 
in  the  windows  of  houses.  A  filmy  blue  veil  of 
twilight  obscures  the  distances,  so  that  they  are 
soft,  alluring.  The  tower  is  pale,  almost  ethereal, 
at  the  end  of  the  vista.  Its  great  clock,  pricked 
out  with  golden  lamps,  seems  scarce  a  third  of 
the  way  up  its  side.  The  white  walls  rise  on, 
and  on,  with  here  and  there  a  spot  of  gold,  and 
taper  into  nothing.  They  are  lost  in  the  gloom 
of  coming  night.  But  still  they  must  go  on, 
for  far  aloft  you  see  the  lantern  glowing  like 
a  star,  hung  between  earth  and  heaven.  In  this 
twilight  hour  of  blue  and  gold  the  tower  is  the 
mighty  guardian  spirit  of  the  scene,  sending 
down  sonorous  word  of  the  hours  as  they  pass, 
and  lifting  our  eyes,  like  its  steady  lantern,  to 
ward  the  watch-towers  of  Eternity.  Must  we  be 
forever  reminded  that  those  glowing  window 
squares  up  its  flanks  denote  lawyers  toiling  late 
at  their  briefs,  or  mining  stock  promoters  plan 
ning  a  new  cast  of  the  net?  Must  we  be  forever 
told  that  this  is  not  a  spire  in  praise  of  God  but 


The  Twilight  Veil  147 

a  monument  in  praise  of  Mammon?  Aspiration 
is  in  its  lines,  beauty  in  its  sky-borne  shaft  of  blue 
and  gold,  wonder  in  its  shrouded  summit. 

"They  builded  better  than  they  knew — 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew." 

It  is  enough.    Let  us  wonder  and  be  glad. 

There  are  many  odd  views  of  the  tower  to  be 
had  for  a  little  searching,  spots  where  its  peak 
appears  in  unexpected  places,  or  with  unusual 
suggestion.  There  is  just  one  point  in  Union 
Square,  for  example,  about  halfway  round  "dead 
man's  curve/'  where  you  see  the  tapering  pyra 
mid  and  the  golden  lantern  overtopping  the  high 
buildings  between.  You  do  not  see  it  again,  if 
you  are  walking  up  Broadway,  till  you  are  close 
to  Madison  Square.  Then,  if  you  lift  your  eyes, 
you  are  suddenly  aware  of  it  looming  far  aloft 
over  the  cornice-line  to  your  right,  shredding 
the  mists  on  a  stormy  day,  or  by  night  lifting 
its  latern  up  with  the  stars.  There  is  always  an 
added  impressiveness  about  a  tower  when  we 
cannot  see  the  base.  The  sheer  drop  of  its  sides 
is  left  to  our  imagination,  and  the  human  im 
agination  may  generally  be  trusted  to  embroider 
fad:.  For  that  reason  alone,  the  view  of  the 
tower  from  a  certain  point  on  East  Thirty-first 
Street,  between  Madison  and  Fourth  Avenues, 
would  be  worth  the  searching  out.  But  it  has 
another  and  unique  charm.  If  you  will  walk 


148  The  Twilight  Veil 

along  Thirtieth  Street  toward  Fourth  Avenue  you 
will  see,  tucked  in  between  larger  and  more 
modern  buildings  on  the  south  side,  a  little  two- 
story-and-a-half  wooden  cottage,  set  back  a  few 
feet  behind  an  iron  fence.  It  must  have  stood 
there  many  years,  for  the  wooden  age  in  New 
York  was  long,  long  ago.  It  is  a  quaint  little 
dwelling,  with  quaint  pseudo-Gothic  ornamen 
tations,  and  until  recently  was  used  as  an  antique 
shop.  A  large  weather-stained  Venus  stood  upon 
the  front  porch,  ironically  beside  a  spinning- 
wheel!  Now  the  house  is  untenanted,  so  that 
you  lift  your  eyes  the  sooner  to  look  above  and 
beyond  it.  It  occupies,  of  course,  a  slit  between 
higher  buildings.  Through  that  slit,  as  you  stand 
on  the  opposite  curb,  you  look  over  a  few  spindly 
black  chimney-stacks  in  the  foreground  directly 
to  the  Metropolitan  Tower,  booming  up  sud 
denly  and  unexpectedly.  You  see  only  that  for 
a  moment,  because  of  its  Titanic  size  and  white 
impressiveness.  Then  you  notice  something  out 
lined  against  it,  a  lower  tower,  much  more  slender, 
a  mere  tracery  of  delicate  shafts  and  belfries,  and 
crowning  it,  her  bow  forever  poised,  the  lovely 
limbed  Diana.  Whence  either  of  these  towers 
come,  you  see  not.  They  merely  spring  up  into 
the  vision  over  the  roof  of  the  little  wooden  house, 
the  darker  one  outlined  against  the  other  for  com 
parison.  Between  and  around  them  steam  plumes 
from  unseen  buildings  drift  like  clouds.  Diana 


The  Twilight  Veil  149 

turns  a  little,  and  points  her  shaft  into  the  wind 
anew.  The  might  of  the  new  tower  is  mightier 
for  this  close  comparison.  Yet  the  other  tower,  too, 
does  not  suffer,  its  femininity  is  the  more  allur 
ing.  But  lift  your  eyes  as  you  walk  through  this 
commonplace  cross-street  of  New  York,  and  you 
may  see  as  picturesque  a  vista,  over  the  quaint 
wooden  cottage,  as  any  city,  anywhere,  affords — 
forty  stories  looking  down  on  two  and  a  half, 
and  between  them,  in  intermediate  flight,  St. 
Gaudens'  bronze  Diana. 

Snow  in  the  city!  We  in  New  York  tjhink 
of  bespattered  boots,  of  horses  falling  down,  of 
dirty  piles,  more  black  than  white,  lining  the 
streets  like  igloos  till  the  tip-carts  come  and 
carry  them  off.  "The  frolic  architecture"  of  the 
snow  is  a  thing  of  memory,  not  of  present  fad:. 
Like  Whittier,  we  recall  the  hooded  well-sweep 
or  fantastic  pump,  and  the  great  drifts  by  the 
pasture  wall.  Yet,  once  again,  it  is  the  seeing 
eye  we  lack,  nor  do  we  need  even  to  enter  the 
Park  to  discover  the  snow  at  its  artistic  handi 
work.  Let  Sixty-fifth  Street  enter  the  Park  for 
you,  from  the  east,  and  do  you  stand  upon  Fifth 
Avenue  and  note  the  conversion  from  ugliness 
to  beauty  of  a  paved  road,  dipping  into  a  dug- 
way  between  dirty  stone  walls.  The  soiled  pave 
ment  is  hidden  now,  each  rough  stone  on  the 
bounding  walls  is  softly  outlined  with  white, 
not  far  into  the  Park  a  graceful  stone  foot-bridge 


150  The  Twilight  Veil 

spans  the  sunken  street,  supporting  a  second  and 
more  graceful  arch  of  snow,  and  the  street  curves 
alluringly  into  the  trees  which  rise  beyond,  a 
gray  wall  of  misty  shadow,  the  eye  is  satisfied 
with  a  clean,  well-composed,  strongly  lined 
picture,  and  the  imagination  almost  deluded  into 
a  belief  of  its  rusticity. 

I  remember  once  walking  down  Broadway 
late  at  night,  after  an  evening  at  some  tiresome 
play  and  supper  at  some  yet  more  tiresome  and 
tawdry  restaurant.  I  had  been  having  what  is 
popularly  supposed  to  be  a  "good  time,"  and  I 
was  bored.  There  had  been  a  recent  deep  fall 
of  snow.  The  night  was  clear  and  cold.  Below 
Herald  Square  I  met  comparatively  few  pedes 
trians,  and  those  few  were  not  of  the  sort  to 
dispel  my  despondent  mood. 

"Back  home,"  I  thought,  "the  moon  should 
be  shining  on  the  white,  clean  hills,  and  under 
neath  my  boots  the  snow-crust  would  squeak. 
Perhaps  a  screech-owl  would  whistle  his  plain 
tive  call  in  the  ghostly  orchard.  How  beautiful 
there  the  night  would  be!  But  here — "  and  I 
flung  out  my  arm  instinctively  toward  the  walls 
which  hemmed  me  in. 

But  as  I  drew  near  Madison  Square,  and  lifted 
my  eyes  to  the  soaring  ship's-prow  of  the  Flat- 
iron  Building,  I  noted  suddenly  that  its  upper 
stories  were  bathed  in  a  pale,  golden  glow;  and 
coming  full  into  the  square,  I  saw  the  moon, 


The  Twilight  Veil  151 

riding  small  and  high  beyond  the  white  tower. 
The  next  strip  of  canon  street  shut  it  out  once 
more,  but  at  Union  Square  it  was  waiting  to 
greet  me,  and  as  I  entered  the  slit  of  Broadway 
to  the  south  and  drew  near  Eleventh  street,  I  was 
aware  of  the  snow-covered  northward  pitch  of 
Grace  Church  roof  gleaming  in  its  light,  a  great 
rectangle  of  pale  radiance  at  the  bend  of  the 
street.  Above  the  roof  the  Gothic  spire  stood  up 
serenely.  There  were  no  passers  at  the  moment, 
not  even  a  trolley-car.  The  greatest  traffic  artery 
in  town  was  hushed  as  death.  The  high  build 
ings  about  were  dark  and  shadowy.  At  the  angle 
commanding  the  vista  in  either  direction  the 
church  slept  in  the  moonlight. 

"Deep  on  the  convent  roof  the  snows 
Are  sparking  to  the  moon." 

Tennyson's  lines  came  to  me  instinctively,  for 
here  in  the  heart  of  town  was  their  very  picture 
and  their  simple  magic.  A  little  shamefaced  for 
my  sceptic  blindness,  I  passed  on  toward  home. 
Somebody,  probably  Emerson,  said  that  we 
bring  from  Europe  only  what  we  take  to  it.  But 
need  one  go  to  Europe  to  demonstrate  the  prin 
ciple?  We  in  New  York,  who  are  often  our 
city's  harshest  critics,  find  pretty  much  what  we 
look  for.  We  do  not  look  for  beauty,  and  we 
do  not  find  it.  Then,  too,  man  is  no  less  con 
ventional  about  beauty  than  about  other  things. 


152  The  Twilight  Veil 

If  he  believes  that  the  beauty  of  a  city  lies  in  a 
level  cornice-line,  converging  vistas,  malls  of 
trees,  "civic  centres/'  of  what  use  to  tell  him 
that  there  may  be  a  beauty  as  well  of  non-con 
formity,  when  the  magic  veil  of  twilight  wraps 
the  city  round,  and  twinkling  lamps  climb  un 
believable  heights  and  all  the  town  is  a  mighty 
nocShirne  in  blue  and  gold?  We  would  not  be 
thought  to  say  that  New  York  is  always  beauti 
ful,  or  that  a  great  deal  of  it  is  not  much  of  the 
time  ugly  beyond  hope.  But  there  is  not  a  street 
of  it  from  end  to  end  but  has  some  point  of  pic 
torial  charm,  whence  one  may  see  a  span  of  the 
Brooklyn  Bridge  leaping  over  the  tenements,  or 
the  scholastic  Gothic  spire  of  the  City  College 
chapel  crowning  the  rocks  at  the  close  of  the 
vista,  or  just  a  rosy  sunset  over  the  Hoboken 
hills.  And  there  are  parks  and  squares  of  almost 
constant  charm,  though  it  be  a  charm  not  of  the 
old  world,  but  the  new,  of  the  uprearing  steel 
city  of  the  twentieth  century.  And  finally  there 
are  certain  hours  when  kindly  Nature  takes  a 
hand  at  coloring  our  drab  mortar  piles  and 
softening  out  distances  and  making  our  forests 
of  masonry  no  less  wonderful  to  look  upon  than 
her  own  forests  of  timber.  Such  an  hour  is  the 
blue  twilight,  such  an  hour  may  be  the  wet  even 
ing  when  the  pavements  shine  with  molten  gold 
and  the  eledric  signs  along  upper  Broadway, 
like  King  Arthur's  dragoned  helmet,  make  "all 


The  Twilight  Veil  153 

the  night  a  steam  of  fire,"  and  round  the  tall 
tower  of  the  Times  Building  the  vapour  clouds 
drift,  now  concealing,  now  revealing  some  beam 
of  light  from  a  window  high  aloft.  After  all, 
it  is  no  great  credit  to  any  of  us  to  find  the 
ugliness  in  New  York.  The  ugliness  is  rather 
obvious.  To  find  the  beauty  is  a  worthier  task, 
and  might  make  us  more  keen  to  cherish  and 
to  expand  it.  It  is  there  for  the  seeing  eye. 


Spring  in  the  Qarden 

No  DAFFODILS  "take  the  winds  of  March  with 
beauty"  in  our  Berkshire  gardens.  What  daffo 
dils  we  have  in  that  month  of  alternate  slush  and 
blizzard  bloom  in  pots,  indoors.  But  one  sign 
of  spring  the  gardens  holds  no  less  plain  to  read, 
even  if  some  people  may  not  regard  it  as  so  po 
etic — over  across  the  late  snow,  close  to  the  hot 
bed  frames,  a  great  pile  of  fresh  stable  manure 
is  steaming  like  a  miniature  volcano.  To  the 
true  gardener,  that  sight  is  thrilling,  nay,  lyric!  I 
have  always  found  that  the  measure  of  a  man's 
(and  more  especially  a  woman's)  garden  love  was 
to  be  found  in  his  (or  her)  attitude  toward  the 
manure  pile.  For  that  reason  I  put  the  manure 
pile  in  the  first  paragraph  of  my  praise  of  gardens 
in  the  spring. 

That  yellowish-brown,  steaming  volcano  above 
the  slushy  snow  of  March  promises  so  much !  I 
will  not  offend  sensitive  garden  owners  who  hire 
others  to  do  their  dirty  work5  by  singing  the  joy 
of  turning  it  over  with  a  fork,  once,  twice,  per 
haps  three  times,  till  it  is  "working"  evenly  all 
through.  Yet  there  is  such  joy,  accentuated  on 


Spring  in  the  (jar den  155 

the  second  day  by  the  facl  that  the  thermometer 
has  taken  a  sudden  jump  upwards,  the  snow  is 
melting  fast,  and  in  the  shrubs  and  evergreen 
hedge  the  song-sparrows  are  singing,  and  the 
robins.  Last  year,  I  remember,  I  paused  with 
the  steaming  pile  half  turned,  first  to  roll  up  my 
sleeves  and  feel  the  warm  sun  on  my  arms  — 
most  delicious  of  early  spring  sensations  —  and 
then  to  listen  to  the  love-call  of  a  chickadee, 
over  and  over  the  three  notes,  one  long  and  two 
short  a  whole  tone  lower.  I  answered  him,  he 
replied,  and  we  played  our  little  game  for  two 
or  three  minutes,  till  he  came  close  and  detected 
the  fraud.  Then  a  bluebird  flashed  through  the 
orchard,  a  jay  screamed,  as  I  bent  to  my  toil 
again.  Beside  me  were  the  hotbed  frames,  the 
glasses  newly  washed,  the  winter  bedding  of 
leaves  removed,  and  behind  them  last  year's  con 
tents  rotted  into  rich  loam.  Another  day  or  two, 
and  they  would  be  prepared  for  seeding  —  if  I 
only  could  bring  myself  to  work  hard  enough 
until  then! 

How  much  hope  goes  into  a  hotbed  in  late 
March,  or  early  April!  How  much  warmth  the 
friendly  manure  down  under  the  soil  sends  up  by 
night  to  germinate  the  seeds,  though  the  weather 
go  back  to  winter  outside — as  it  invariably  does 
in  our  mountains!  Last  year,  for  example,  we 
had  snow  on  the  nitnh  of  April,  and  again  on  the 
twenty-third  and  twenty-ninth,  while  the  year 


156  Spring  in  the  garden 

before,  on  the  ninth,  six  inches  fell.  In  the  low 
land  regions  gardening  is  easier,  perhaps,  but  yet 
there  is  a  certain  joy  in  this  fickle  spring  weather 
of  ours, — the  joy  of  going  out  in  the  morning 
across  a  white  garden  and  sweeping  the  snow  from 
hotbed  mats,  lifting  the  moist,  steaming  glass, 
and  catching  from  within,  strong  against  your 
face,  the  pungent  warmth  and  aroma  of  the 
heated  soil  and  the  delicate  fragrance  of  young 
seedlings.  How  fast  the  seeds  come  —  some  of 
them!  Others  come  so  slowly  that  the  amateur 
gardener  is  in  despair,  and  angrily  decides  to  try 
a  new  seed  house  next  year.  The  vegetable 
frames  are  sown  in  rows — celery,  tomatoes,  cauli 
flowers,  lettuce,  radishes,  peppers,  coming  up  in 
tiny  green  ribbons,  the  radishes  racing  ahead. 
The  flower  frames,  however,  are  sown  in  squares, 
each  about  a  foot  across,  and  each  labeled  and 
marked  off*  with  a  thin  strip  of  wood.  These 
are  the  early  plantings  of  the  annuals,  for  we 
cannot  sow  out-of-doors  till  the  first  or  even  the 
second  week  in  May  in  our  climate.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  we  do  not  dare  to  sow  even  in  the  frames 
till  well  into  April.  The  asters  are  usually  up  first, 
racing  the  weeds.  The  little  squares  make,  in  a 
week  or  so,  a  green  checker-board,  each  promis 
ing  its  quota  of  color  to  the  garden,  and  very 
soon  the  early  cosmos,  thinned  to  the  strongest 
plants,  has  shot  up  like  a  miniature  forest,  tower 
ing  over  the  lowlier  seedlings,  sometimes  bump- 


Spring  in  the  (garden  157 

ing  its  head  against  the  glass  before  it  can  be 
transplanted  to  the  open  ground  in  May.  But 
most  prolific,  most  promising,  and  most  bother 
some,  are  the  squares  labeled  "antirrhinum/' 
coral  red,  salmon  pink,  white,  dark  maroon,  and 
so  on;  tiny  seeds  scattered  on  the  ground  and 
sprinkled  with  a  little  sand,  they  come  up  by 
the  hundred,  and  each  seedling  has  to  go  into 
a  pot  before  it  goes  into  the  ground. 

There  is  work  for  an  April  day!  I  sit  on  a 
board  by  the  hotbed,  cross-legged  like  a  Turk, 
while  the  sun  is  warm  on  my  neck  and  I  feel 
my  arms  tanning,  and  removing  a  mass  of  the 
seedlings  on  a  flat  mason's  trowel,  I  lift  each 
strong  plant  between  thumb  and  .finger,  its  long, 
delicate  white  root  dangling  like  a  needle,  and 
pot  it  in  a  small  paper  pot.  When  two  score  pots 
are  ready,  I  set  them  in  a  cold-frame,  sprinkle 
them,  stretch  the  kink  out  of  my  back,  listen  to 
the  wood- thrush  a  moment  (he  came  on  the 
fourteenth  and  is  evidently  planning  to  nest  in 
our  pines),  and  then  return  to  my  job.  Patience 
is  required  to  pot  four  or  five  hundred  snap 
dragons;  but  patience  is  required,  after  all,  in 
most  things  that  are  rightly  performed.  I  think 
as  I  work  of  the  glory  around  my  sundial  in 
July,  I  arrange  and  rearrange  the  colors  in  my 
mind — and  presently  the  job  is  done. 

But  the  steaming  manure  pile  is  not  the  only 
sign  of  spring,  nor  the  hotbeds  the  only  things 


158  Spring  in  the  Cjarden 

to  be  attended  to.  If  they  only  were,  how  much 
easier  gardening  would  be — and  how  much  less 
exciting!  There  is  always  work  to  be  done  in 
the  orchard,  for  instance,  some  pruning  and 
scraping.  I  always  go  into  the  orchard  on  the 
first  really  warm,  spring-like  March  day,  with  a 
common  hoe,  and  scrape  a  little,  not  so  much 
for  the  good  of  the  trees  as  for  the  good  of  my 
soul.  The  real  scraping  for  the  scale  spray  was, 
of  course,  done  earlier.  There  is  a  curious,  faintly 
putrid  smell  to  old  or  bruised  apple  wood,  which 
is  stirred  by  my  scraping,  and  that  smell  sweeps 
over  me  a  wave  of  memories,  memories  of  child 
hood  in  a  great  yellow  house  that  stood  back 
from  the  road  almost  in  its  orchard,  and  boasted 
a  cupola  with  panes  of  colored  glass  which  made 
the  familiar  landscape  strange;  memories  of  youth 
in  that  same  house,  too,  dim  memories  "  of  sweet, 
forgotten,  wistful  things. "  My  early  spring  af 
ternoons  in  the  orchard  are  very  precious  to  me 
now,  and  when  the  weather  permits  I  always 
try  to  burn  the  rubbish  and  dead  prunings  on 
Good  Friday,  the  incense  of  the  apple  wood  float 
ing  across  the  brown  garden  like  a  prayer,  the 
precious  ashes  sinking  down  to  enrich  the  soil. 
The  bees,  too,  are  always  a  welcome  sign  of 
the  returning  season,  hardly  less  than  the  birds, 
though  the  advent  of  the  white-throated  sparrow 
(who  delayed  till  April  twenty-first  last  year)  is 
always  a  great  event.  He  is  first  heard  most  often 


Spring  in  the  (garden  159 

before  breakfast,  in  an  apple  tree  close  to  the 
sleeping-porch,  his  flute-like  triplets  sweetly 
penetrating  my  dreams  and  bringing  me  gladly 
out  of  bed — something  he  alone  can  do,  by  the 
way,  and  not  even  he  after  the  first  morning! 
But  the  bees  come  long  before.  The  earliest 
record  I  have  is  March  thirty-first,  but  there 
must  be  dates  before  that  which  I  have  negle&ed 
to  put  down.  Some  house  plant,  a  hyacinth  pos 
sibly,  is  used  as  bait,  and  when  the  ground  is 
thawing  out  beneath  a  warm  spring  sun  we  put 
the  plant  on  the  southern  veranda  and  watch. 
Day  after  day  nothing  happens,  then  suddenly, 
some  noon,  it  has  scarcely  been  set  on  the  ground 
when  its  blossoms  stir,  and  it  is  murmurous  with 
bees.  Then  we  know  that  spring  indeed  has 
come,  and  we  begin  to  rake  the  lawns,  wherever 
the  frost  is  out,  wheeling  great  crate  loads  of 
leaves  and  rubbish  upon  the  garden,  and  filling 
our  neighbors'  houses  with  pungent  smoke. 

There  is  a  certain  spot  between  the  thumb  and 
first  finger  which  neither  axe  nor  golf-club  nor 
saw  handle  seems  to  callous.  The  spring  raking 
finds  it  out,  and  gleefully  starts  to  raise  a  blister. 
My  hands  are  perpetually  those  of  a  day-laborer, 
yet  I  expect  that  blister  every  spring.  Indeed, 
I  am  rather  disappointed  now  if  I  don't  get  it, 
I  feel  as  if  I  weren't  doing  my  share  of  work. 
The  work  is  worth  the  blister.  I  know  of  few 
sensations  more  delightful  than  that  of  seeing 


160  Spring  in  the  Cjarden 

the  lawn  emerging  green  and  clean  beneath  your 
rake,  the  damp  mould  baring  itself  under  the 
shrubbery,  the  paths,  freshly  edged,  nicely  scar- 
rowed  with  tooth  marks;  then  of  feeling  the 
tug  of  the  barrow  handles  in  your  shoulder 
sockets;  and  finally,  as  the  sun  is  sending  long 
shadows  over  the  ground,  of  standing  beside  the 
rubbish  pile  with  your  rake  as  a  poker  and 
hearing  the  red  flames  crackle  and  roar  through 
the  heap,  while  great  puffs  of  beautiful  brown 
smoke  go  rolling  away  across  the  garden  and 
the  warmth  is  good  to  your  tired  body.  Clear 
ing  up  is  such  a  delight,  indeed,  that  I  cannot 
now  comprehend  why  I  so  intensely  disliked 
to  do  it  when  I  was  half  my  present  age.  Per 
haps  it  was  because  at  that  time  clearing  up  was 
put  to  me  in  the  light  of  a  duty,  not  a  pleasure. 
There  is  alas,  too  often  a  tempering  of  sadness 
in  the  joy  of  taking  the  covers  off  the  garden. 
One  removes  them,  especially  after  a  cold  open 
winter,  with  much  the  same  anxious  excitement 
that  one  opens  a  long-delayed  letter  from  a  dear 
friend  who  has  been  in  danger.  What  signs  of 
life  will  the  peonies  show  under  their  four  inches 
of  rotted  manure,  and  the  Japanese  irises  by  the 
pool,  and  the  beds  of  Darwins,  so  confidently 
relied  upon  to  ring  the  sundial  in  late  May  and 
early  June,  before  the  succeeding  annuals  are 
ready?  How  will  the  hollyhocks,  so  stately  in 
midsummer  all  down  the  garden  wall,  have  with- 


Spring  in  the  (garden  161 

stood  the  alternate  thaws  and  freezes  which  char 
acterized  our  abominable  January  and  February? 
Then  there  are  those  two  long  rows  of  foxgloves 
and  Canterbury  bells,  across  the  rear  of  the  vege 
table  garden,  where  they  were  set  in  the  fall  to 
make  strong  plants  before  being  put  in  their 
permanent  places — or  rather  their  season's  places, 
for  these  lovely  flowers  are  perversely  biennials, 
and  at  least  seven  times  every  spring  I  vow  I 
will  never  bother  with  them  again,  and  then 
make  an  even  larger  sowing  when  their  stately 
stalks  and  sky-blue  bells  are  abloom  in  summer! 
Tenderly  you  lift  the  pine  boughs  from  them 
on  a  balmy  April  day  (it  was  not  until  almost 
mid-April  last  year),  when  snow  still  lingers, 
perhaps,  in  dirty  patches  on  the  north  side  of 
the  evergreens.  Will  they  show  frozen,  flabby, 
withered  leaves,  or  will  their  centers  be  bright 
with  new  promise?  It  is  a  moment  to  try  the 
soul  of  the  gardener,  and  no  joy  is  quite  like 
that  of  finding  them  all  alive,  nor  any  sorrow 
like  that  of  finding  them  dead.  At  first  I  used 
to  give  up  gardening  forever  when  the  perennials 
and  biennials  were  winter-killed,  just  as  a  be 
ginner  at  golf  gives  up  the  game  forever  each 
time  he  makes  a  vile  score.  Then  I  began  to  com 
promise  on  a  garden  of  annuals.  Now  I  have 
learned  philosophy — and  also  better  methods 
of  winter  protection.  Likewise,  I  have  learned 
that  a  good  many  of  the  perennials  which  were 


162  Spring  in  the  (garden 

stone-dead  when  the  covers  were  removed  have 
a  trick  of  coming  to  life  under  the  kiss  of  May, 
and  struggling  up  to  some  sort  of  bloom,  even 
if  heroically  spindly  like  lean  soldiers  after  a 
hard  campaign.  The  hollyhocks,  especially,  have 
a  way  of  seeding  themselves  undetected,  and  pre 
senting  you  in  spring  with  a  whole  unsuspected 
family  of  children,  some  of  whom  wander  far 
from  the  parent  stem  and  suddenly  begin  to  shoot 
up  in  the  most  unexpected  places.  An  exquisite 
yellow  hollyhock  last  summer  sprouted  unnoted 
beneath  our  dinning-room  window,  and  we 
were  not  aware  of  it  till  one  July  morning  when 
it  poked  up  above  the  sill.  A  few  days  later, 
when  we  came  down  to  breakfast,  there  it  was 
abloom,  nodding  in  at  the  open  window. 

Another  spring  excitement  in  the  garden  is 
the  pea  planting,  both  the  sweet  peas  and  what 
our  country  folk  sometimes  call  "eatin'  peas." 
No  rivalry  is  so  keen  as  that  between  pea- 
growers.  My  neighbors  and  I  struggle  for  su 
premacy  in  sweet  peas  at  the  flower  show  in 
July,  and  great  glory  goes  to  him  who  gets  the 
first  mess  of  green  peas  on  his  table.  We  have 
tried  sweet-pea  sowing  in  the  fall,  and  it  does 
not  work.  So  now  I  prepare  a  trench  in  Octo 
ber,  partially  fill  it  with  manure,  and  cover  it 
with  leaves,  which  I  remove  at  the  first  hint  of 
warm  weather  in  March.  The  earth-piles  on 
either  side  thaw  out  quickly,  and  I  get  an  early 


Spring  in  the  (jar den  163 

sowing,  putting  in  as  many  varieties  as  I  can  af 
ford  (my  wife  says  twice  as  many  as  I  can  afford), 
jealously  guarding  the  secret  of  their  number. 
The  vegetable  peas  are  planted  later,  usually 
about  the  first  or  second  day  of  April,  as  soon  as 
the  top  soil  of  the  garden  can  be  worked  with 
a  fork,  and  long  before  the  plowing.  We  put 
in  first  a  row  of  Daniel  O'Rourke's,  not  because 
they  are  good  for  much,  but  because  they  will 
beat  any  other  variety  we  have  discovered  by  two 
days  at  least.  Then  we  put  in  a  row  of  a  better 
standard  early  variety.  How  we  watch  those 
rows  for  the  first  sprouts!  How  we  coddle  and 
cultivate  them!  How  eagerly  we  insped:  our 
neighbors'  rows,  trying  to  appear  nonchalant! 
And  doubtless  how  silly  this  sounds  to  anyone 
who  is  not  a  gardener.  Last  summer  we  got 
our  first  mess  of  peas  on  June  twenty-first,  and 
after  eating  a  spoonful,  we  rushed  to  the  tele 
phone,  and  were  about  to  ring,  when  somebody 
called  us.  "Hello/'  we  said  into  the  transmitter. 
A  voice  on  the  other  end  of  the  wire,  curiously 
choked  and  munchy,  cried,  "We  are  eating  our 
first  peas!  My  mouth's  full  of 'em  now!" 

"That's  nothing,"  we  answered,  "we've  got 
our  first  mouthful  all  swallowed." 

"Well,  anyhow,"  said  our  disappointed  neigh 
bor,  "I  called  up  first!  Good-bye." 

How  is  that  for  a  neck-and-neck  finish  at 
the  tape? 


164  Spring  in  the  (garden 

As  April  waxes  into  May,  the  garden  beds  are 
a  perpetual  adventure  in  the  expected,  each  morn 
ing  bringing  some  new  revelation  of  old  friends 
come  back,  and  as  you  dig  deep  and  prepare  the 
beds  for  the  annuals,  or  spade  manure  around  the 
perennials,  or  set  your  last  year's  plantings  of 
hollyhocks,  larkspur,  foxgloves  and  campanulas 
into  their  places,  you  move  tenderly  amid  the 
aspiring  red  stalks  of  the  peonies,  the  Jason's 
crop  of  green  iris  spears,  the  leaves  of  tulips  and 
narcissuses  and  daffodils,  the  fresh  green  of  tiny 
sweet  William  plants  clustered  'round  the  mother 
plant  like  a  brood  of  chicks  around  the  hen. 
You  must  be  at  setting  them  into  borders,  too, 
or  putting  the  surplus  into  flats  and  then  tele 
phoning  your  less  fortunate  friends.  One  of  the 
joys  of  a  garden  is  in  giving  away  your  extra 
plants  and  seedlings. 

One  morning  the  asparagus  bed,  already 
brown  again  after  the  April  showers  have  driven 
the  salt  into  the  ground,  is  pricked  with  short 
tips.  That  is  a  luscious  sight!  Inch  by  inch  they 
push  up,  and  thick  and  fast  they  come  at  last, 
and  more  and  more  and  more.  My  diary  shows 
me  that  we  ate  our  first  bunch  last  year  on  May 
ninth.  On  that  day,  also,  I  learn  from  the  same 
source,  the  daffodils  were  out,  the  Darwin  tu 
lips  were  budding,  and  we  spent  the  afternoon 
burning  caterpillars'  nests  in  the  orchard — one 
spring  crop  which  is  never  welcome,  and  never 


Spring  in  the  Gfarden  165 

winter-killed.  At  this  date,  too,  we  are  hard  at 
work  spraying,  and  sowing  the  annuals  out-of- 
doors  in  the  seed  beds,  and  planting  corn  (the 
potatoes  are  all  in  by  now),  immediately  follow 
ing  the  plowing,  which  was  delayed  till  the  first 
of  May  by  a  belated  snowstorm.  Winter  with  us 
is  like  a  clumsy  person  who  tries  over  and  over 
to  make  his  exit  from  a  room  but  does  not  know 
how  to  accomplish  it.  It  is  a  busy  time,  for 
no  sooner  are  the  annuals  planted,  and  the  vege 
tables,  than  some  of  the  seedlings  from  the  hot 
beds  have  to  be  set  out  (such  as  early  cosmos), 
and  the  perennial  beds  already  have  begun  to 
bloom,  and  require  cultivation  and  admiration, 
and  the  flowers  in  the  wild  garden — hepaticas 
and  trilliums  and  bloodroot  and  violets — are  cry 
ing  to  be  noticed,  and,  confound  it  all,  here  is 
the  lawn  getting  rank  under  the  influence  of  its 
spring  dressing,  and  demands  to  be  mowed!  Yes, 
and  we  forget  to  get  the  mower  sharpened  be 
fore  we  put  it  away  in  the  fall. 

"May  fifteen" — it  is  my  diary  for  last  year — 
"apple  blossoms  showing  pink,  and  the  rhubarb 
leaves  peeping  over  the  tops  of  their  barrels  this 
morning,  like  Ali  Baba  and  the  forty  thieves." 

Well,  well;  straight,  juicy  red  stalks  the  length 
of  a  barrel,  fit  for  a  pie  and  the  market!  It  is 
our  second  commercial  product,  the  asparagus 
slightly  preceding  it.  The  garden  is  getting  into 
shape  now,  indeed;  the  wheel-hoe  is  traveling  up 


1 66  Spring  in  the  Qarden 

and  down  the  green  rows;  the  hotbed  glasses  are 
entirely  removed  by  day;  and  the  early  cauli 
flower  plants  are  put  into  the  open  ground  at 
the  first  promise  of  a  shower.  The  annuals  are 
up  in  the  seed  beds;  the  pool  has  been  cleaned 
and  filled,  the  goldfish  are  once  more  swimming 
in  it,  the  Cape  Cod  water-lily,  brought  from  its 
winter  quarters  in  the  dark  cellar,  has  begun  to 
make  a  leaf,  and  we  have  begun  to  hope  that 
maybe  this  year  it  will  also  make  a  blossom,  for 
we  are  nothing  in  mid-May  if  not  optimistic. 

The  earlier  Darwins  are  already  in  bloom. 
The  German  irises  follow  rapidly.  June  comes, 
and  we  work  amid  the  splendors  of  the  Japanese 
irises  and  the  flame-line  of  Oriental  poppies,  set 
ting  the  annuals  into  their  beds,  from  the  tender, 
droopy  schyzanthus  plants  to  the  various  asters 
and  the  now  sturdy  snapdragons.  The  color 
scheme  had  been  carefully  planned  last  winter, 
and  is  as  cheerfully  disregarded  now,  as  some 
new  inspiration  strikes  us,  such  as  a  border  of 
purple  asters  against  salvia,  with  white  dahlias 
behind — a  strip  of  daring  fall  color  which  would 
delight  the  soul  of  Gari  Melcher,  which  de 
lighted  me — and  which  my  wife  said  was 
horrible. 

So  spring  comes  and  goes  in  the  garden,  busy 
and  beautiful,  ceaseless  work  and  ceaseless  won 
der.  But  there  is  a  moment  in  its  passage,  as 
yet  unmentioned,  which  I  have  kept  for  the 


Spring  in  the  (garden  167 

close  because  to  me  it  is  the  subtle  climax  of 
the  resurrection  season.  It  usually  comes  in 
April  for  us,  though  sometimes  earlier.  The 
time  is  evening,  always  evening,  just  after  sup 
per,  when  a  frail  memory  of  sunset  still  lingers 
in  the  west  and  the  air  is  warm.  I  go  out  hat- 
less  upon  the  veranda,  thinking  of  other  things, 
and  suddenly  I  am  aware  of  the  song  of  the 
frogs !  There  are  laughing  voices  in  the  street, 
the  tinkle  of  a  far-off  piano,  the  pleasant  sounds 
of  village  life  come  outdoors  with  the  return 
of  spring;  and  buoying  up,  permeating  these 
other  sounds  comes  the  ceaseless,  shrill  chorus 
of  the  frogs,  seemingly  from  out  of  the  air  and 
distance,  beating  in  waves  on  the  ear.  Why  this 
first  frog  chorus  so  thrills  me  I  cannot  explain, 
nor  what  dim  memories  it  wakes.  But  the 
peace  of  it  steals  over  all  my  senses,  and  I  walk 
down  into  the  dusk  and  seclusion  of  my  gar 
den,  amid  the  sweet  odors  of  new  earth  and 
growing  things,  where  the  song  comes  up  to  me 
from  the  distant  meadow  making  the  garden- 
close  sweeter  still,  the  air  yet  more  warm  and 
fragrant,  the  promise  of  spring  more  magical. 
The  garden  then  is  very  intimate  and  dear,  it 
brings  me  into  closer  touch  with  the  awakening 
earth  about  me,  and  all  the  years  I  dwelt  a  pris 
oner  in  cities  are  but  as  the  shadow  of  a  dream. 


The  ^Bubble,  "Deputation 

A  GREAT  dramatist  is  authority  for  the  state 
ment  that — 

The  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them ; 
The  good  is  oft  interred  with  their  bones. 

That  is  no  doubt  in  a  measure  true;  yet  it  would 
be  grossly  unfair  to  blame  personally  certain 
great  ones  of  the  past  for  the  evil  that  has  lived 
after  them  and  borne  their  names.  For  instance, 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  Louis  XIV  of  France 
was  all  that  he  should  have  been.  His  private 
life  would  hardly  have  escaped  censure  in  Upper 
Montclair,  N.  J.,  or  West  Newton,  Mass.,  and 
his  public  a6ts  were  not  always  calculated  to 
promote  social  justice  and  universal  brotherhood. 
But  to  blame  him  for  all  the  gilt  furniture  which 
has  ever  since  stood  around  the  walls  of  hotel 
ballrooms  and  borne  his  name  is  a  libel  even  on 
that  lax  and  luxurious  monarch.  Yet  such  is  his 
fate.  You  who  are  familiar  with  history,  I  who 
know  next  to  nothing  about  it,  are  alike  in  this — 
when  we  hear  the  words  Louis  XIV  we  do  not 
think  of  a  great  monarch  with  a  powdered  wig 


The  'Bubble,  Tt^putation  169 

and  a  powdered  mistress,  of  magnificent  fountains 
and  courtiers  and  ladies  dancing  the  gavotte,  of 
a  brilliant  court  and  striking  epoch.  Not  at  all. 
We  think,  both  of  us,  of  a  gilt  chair  with  a 
brocaded  seat  (slightly  worn),  and  maybe  a  sofa 
to  match.  If  you  say  that  you  don't,  I  must  po 
litely  but  firmly — well,  differ  with  you. 

Alas!  poor  Louis  XIV  was  not  the  only  worthy 
(or  unworthy)  of  the  past  who  has  come  down 
to  the  present,  not  as  a  personality  but  as  a  piece 
of  furniture,  a  dog,  a  boot,  or  some  other  equally 
ignominious  thing.  Speaking  of  furniture,  there's 
the  Morris  chair.  The  man  who  made  the  Mor 
ris  chair  was  a  great  and  good  man — not  because 
he  made  the  Morris  chair,  but  in  spite  of  it! 
He  composed  haunting  poems,  he  wrote  lovely 
prose  romances  of  the  far-off  days  of  knights 
and  ladyes  and  magic  spells,  such  as  that  hight 
The  Water  of  the  Wondrous  Istes,  a  right  brave 
book  mayhap  you  have  not  perused,  to  your  ex 
ceeding  great  loss,  for  beautiful  it  is  and  fair  to 
read  and  full  of  the  mighty  desire  of  a  man  for 
a  maid.  Beside  all  this,  he  printed  lovely  books 
by  other  writers,  and  designed  wall-paper,  and 
painted  pidhires,  and  thundered  against  the  dead 
ening  effed:  on  men  of  mechanical  toil,  and  in 
social  theories  was  far  in  advance  of  his  age.  Such 
a  man  was  William  Morris — known  to-day  to 
the  mass  of  mankind  for  one  of  the  most  accursed 


170  The  ^Bubble,  Imputation 

articles  of  furnitur  e  ever  devised  by  human  inge 
nuity  gone  astray!  Every  day,  in  a  million  homes, 
men  and  women  sit  in  Morris  chairs  (made  by 
machinery)  and  read  Robert  W.  Chambers  and 
Florence  Barclay.  Such,  alas,  is  fame! 

Then  there  was  Queen  Anne — in  many  re- 
spefts  an  estimable  woman,  though  leaving 
much  to  be  desired  as  a  monarch.  She  had  her 
Rooseveltian  virtues,  being  the  mother  of  seven 
teen  children  (none  of  whom  lived  to  grow  be 
yond  infancy,  to  be  sure) ;  and  she  had  what  the 
world  just  now  has  come  to  regard  as  the  monar 
chical  vice  of  autocracy.  In  her  reign  science 
and  literature  flourished,  though  without  much 
aid  from  her,  and  the  English  court  buzzed  with 
intrigue  and  politics.  But  speak  the  name  0%ueen 
Anne  aloud,  and  then  tell  me  the  picture  you 
get.  Is  it  a  picture  of  the  lady  or  her  period?  Is 
it  a  picture  of  Pope  and  Dryden  sitting  in  a 
London  coffee-house?  No,  it  is  not — that  is, 
unless  you  are  a  very  learned,  or  a  very  young, 
person.  It  is  a  picture  of  a  horrible  architectural 
monstrosity  built  about  thirty  or  forty  years  ago 
in  any  American  city  or  suburb,  and  bearing 
certain  vague  resemblances  to  a  home  for  human 
beings.  Whatever  else  Queen  Ann'e  was,  she 
was  not  an  architect,  and  she  wasn't  to  blame  for 
those  houses,  any  more  than  she  was  to  blame 
for  Pope's  "Essay  on  Man."  But  that  doesn't 


The  ^Bubble,  Imputation  171 

count.  She  gets  the  blame,  just  the  same.  She 
is  known  forever  now  by  those  gables  and  that 
gingerbread,  those  shingles  and  stains. 

She  had  a  predecessor  on  the  English  throne 
by  the  name  of  Charles.  Like  Louis  in  France, 
he  wasn't  all  he  should  have  been,  and  there 
were  those  in  his  own  day  who  didn't  entirely 
approve  of  him.  But  it  wasn't  because  of  his 
dogs.  However,  if  you  mention  King  Charles 
now,  it  is  a  dog  you  think  of — a  small,  eary 
dog,  with  somewhat  splay  feet  and  a  seventeenth- 
century  monarchical  preference  for  the  society 
of  ladies  and  the  softest  cushion.  Maybe  the  royal 
gentleman  didn't  deserve  anything  better  of  pos 
terity;  but,  anyhow,  that's  what  he  got. 

St.  Bernhard  fared  better.  If  one  had  to  be 
remembered  by  a  dog,  what  better  dog  could 
he  sele6t,  save  possibly  an  Airedale  ?  Big,  strong, 
faithful,  wise,  true  to  type  for  centuries,  the  most 
reliable  of  God's  creatures  (including  Man  by 
courtesy  in  that  category),  the  St.  Bernhard  is  a 
monument  for — well,  not  for  a  king,  and  a  king 
didn't  get  him;  for  a  saint,  rather.  It  is  doubt 
ful  if  the  old  monk  is  playing  any  lamentations 
on  his  harp. 

But  I'm  not  so  sure  about  that  peerless  mili 
tary  leader,  General  A.  E.  Burnside.  When  you 
have  risen  to  lead  an  army  corps  against  your 
country's  foes,  when  you  have  commanded  men 
and  sat  your  bourse  for  a  statue  on  the  grounds 


172  The  ^Bubble,  "Deputation 

of  the  state  capitol  or  the  intersection  of  Main 
and  State  Streets,  it  really  is  rather  rough  to  be 
remembered  for  your  whiskers.  Of  course,  as  a 
wit  remarked  of  Shaw,  no  man  is  responsible  for 
his  relatives,  but  his  whiskers  are  his  own  fault. 
Nevertheless,  how  is  a  great  general  to  know 
that  his  military  exploits  will  be  forgotten,  while 
his  whiskers  thunder  down  the  ages,  as  it  were, 
progressing  in  the  coures  of  time  with  the  chang 
ing  fashions  from  bank  presidents  to  Presbyte 
rian  elders,  and  finally  to  stage  butlers?  At  last 
even  the  stage  butlers  are  shaving  clean,  and  a 
stroke  of  the  razor  wipes  out  a  military  reputa 
tion,  blasts  a  general's  immortality!  Fame  is  a 
fickle  jade. 

An  artistic  reputation  lasts  longer,  and  resists 
the  barber,  proving  the  superiority  of  the  arts 
to  militarism.  "Van  Dyke"  is  still  a  generally 
familiar  appellation  and  sounds  the  same,  no 
matter  which  way  you  spell  it.  Of  course,  there's 
no  rhyme  nor  reason  in  it — artist  and  whiskers 
should  be  spelled  the  same  way.  Only  they're 
not.  "  Something  ought  to  be  done  about  it." 

However,  to  resume If  you  tell  me  John 

Jones  has  a  Vandyke,  I  don't  visualize  John  as 
an  art-collector  standing  in  his  gallery  in  rapt 
contemplation  of  a  masterpiece  by  the  great 
Flemish  painter.  I  visualize  him  as  a  man  with 
a  certain  type  of  beard.  I  may  later  think  of  the 
master  who  put  these  beards  upon  his  portraits. 


The  'Bubble,  "Deputation  173 

Then  again,  I  may  not.  Exa&ly  the  same  would 
be  true  if  I  told  you  John  Jones  had  a  Vandyke, 
instead  of  the  other  way  about.  Don't  contra 
dict  me — you  know  it's  so.  It  is  nearly  as  dif 
ficult  to-day  to  own  a  Van  Dyke  canvas  as  it  is 
to  paint  one,  but  anybody  can  raise  a  Vandyke 
beard.  In  fact,  many  still  do,  and  thus  keep  the 
master's  memory  green.  "By  their  whiskers  ye 
shall  know  them." 

A  military  reputation,  as  we  have  already 
proved  by  the  case  of  General  Burnside,  is  a  pre 
carious  thing.  How  many  patrons  of  Atlantic 
City,  I  wonder,  know  the  hero  of  the  wars  in  the 
Low  Countries  and  his  greatest  triumph  by  a  cer 
tain  hotel  on  the  Board  Walk,  and  would  be  hard 
put  to  say  which  half  of  the  hyphenated  name  was 
the  general  and  which  the  battle?  Then  there 
was  Wellington,  who  at  one  time  threatened  to 
be  remembered  for  his  boots,  and  Blucher  who 
still  is  remembered  for  his.  A  certain  Massachu 
setts  statesman  (anybody  elected  to  the  Mas 
sachusetts  House  of  Representatives  is  a  states 
man)  once  said  that  the  greatest  triumph  of  Na 
poleon  was  when  Theodore  Roosevelt  stood  silent 
at  his  tomb.  This  is  witty,  but  like  most  witty 
sayings,  not  quite  true.  It  was  a  great  triumph, 
of  course,  but  rather  spectacular.  The  greatest 
triumphs  are  not  showy.  What  actually  proves 
Napoleon's  greatness  is  the  fad:  that  he  is  still 
remembered  as  a  commander  after  generations 


1/4  The  Bubble,  Imputation 

have  selected  from  the  tray  of  French  pastry 
the  detectable  and  indigestible  morsal  of  sugar, 
flour  and  lard  that  bears  his  name.  To  have 
a  toothsome  article  of  food  named  after  you, 
and  then  to  be  still  remembered  for  your  ac 
tual  achievements,  is  the  ultimate  test  of  human 
greatness.  Only  a  Napoleon  can  meet  it.  Even 
Washington  might  not  now  be  known  as  the 
father  of  his  country  if  his  pie  had  been  a  bet 
ter  one. 

Who  was  King,  for  instance?  Was  he  the  cook, 
or  the  man  cooked  for?  I  fancy  I  knew  once, 
but  I  have  forgotten.  But  chicken-a-la-king  will 
live  to  perpetuate  his  name  as  long  as  there  are 
chickens  to  be  eaten  and  men  to  eat  them.  Even 
Sardou,  spectacular  dramatist,  for  all  his  Toscas 
and  Fedoras  (and  ten  to  one  you  think  of  Fedora 
as  a  hat!),  lives  for  me,  a  dramatic  critic,  by  vir 
tue  of  eggs  Vidtorien  Sardou,  a  never-to-be-too- 
much-enjoyed  concoction  secured  at  the  old 
Brevoort  House  in  New  York.  He  may  a£tu- 
ally  have  invented  this  recipe  himself,  for  he 
was  a  great  lover  of  the  pleasures  of  the  table. 
If  so,  it  was  his  masterpiece.  An  egg  is  poached 
on  the  tender  heart  of  an  artichoke,  and  gar 
nished  with  a  peculiar  yellow  sauce,  topped  with 
a  truffle.  Around  all  four  sides  are  laid  little 
bunches  of  fresh  asparagus  tips.  What  is  Tosca 
compared  to  this? 


The  'Bubble,  Imputation  175 

Then,  of  course,  there  was  Mr.  Baldwin.  Who 
was  Mr.  Baldwin?  The  people  of  Wilmington, 
Mass.,  know,  because  there  is  a  monument  to  the 
original  tree  in  that  town.  But  we  don't  know, 
any  more  than  we  know  who  Mr.  Bartlett  was, 
when  we  eat  one  of  his  pears,  or  Mr.  Logan, 
father  of  the  wine-red  berry.  In  this  case  the 
Scripture  is  indeed  verified,  that  by  their  fruits 
shall  ye  know  them. 

Two  or  three  times  a  year  my  wife  gets  cer 
tain  clothes  of  mine  from  the  closet  and  combs 
them  for  moths,  hangs  them  flapping  in  the  breeze 
for  a  while,  and  puts  them  back.  Among  the 
lot  is  a  garment  once  much  worn  by  congressmen, 
church  ushers  and  wedding  guests,  known  to  the 
fashion  editors  as  "frock  coats",  and  to  normal 
human  beings  as  Prince  Alberts.  Doubtless,  in 
the  flux  of  styles  ( like  a  pendulum,  styles  swing 
forth  and  back  again),  the  Prince  Albert  will 
once  more  be  correct,  and  my  wife's  labor  will 
not  have  been  in  vain,  while  the  estimable  con 
sort  of  England's  haircloth  sofa  and  black-walnut 
bureau  queen  will  continue  to  be  remembered 
of  posterity  by  this  outlandish  garment.  Poor 
man,  after  all,  he  achieved  little  else  to  be  re 
membered  by! 

And  as  for  the  queen  herself,  she  will  be  re 
membered  by  a  state  of  mind.  Already  "mid-Vic 
torian"  has  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  Victoria, 
and  is  losing  its  suggestion,  even,  of  a  time-peri- 


176  'The  ^Bubble,  Imputation 

od.  It  is  coming  to  stand  for  a  mental  and  moral 
attitude  —  in  fa6t,  for  priggishness  and  moral 
timidity.  Queen  Victoria  was  a  great  and  good 
lady,  and  her  home  life  was,  as  the  two  women 
so  clearly  pointed  out  when  they  left  the  theatre, 
totally  different  from  that  of  Cleopatra.  But 
she  is  going  to  give  her  name  to  a  mental  atti 
tude,  just  the  same,  even  as  the  Philistines  and 
the  Puritans.  It  pays  to  pick  the  period  you 
queen  it  over  rather  carefully.  Elizabeth  had 
better  luck.  To  be  Elizabethan  is  to  be  every 
thing  gay  and  dashing  and  out-doory  and  ad 
venturesome,  with  insatiable  curiosity  and  the 
gift  of  song.  Of  course,  Shakespeare,  Drake, 
Raleigh,  ought  to  have  the  credit — but  they  don't 
get  it,  any  more  than  Tennyson  comes  in  on  the 
Victorian  discredit.  The  head  that  wears  a  crown 
may  well  lie  uneasy. 

The  memory  of  many  a  man  has  been  per 
petuated,  all  unwittingly,  by  the  manufacturers 
and  advertising  agencies.  Here  I  tread  on  dan 
gerous  ground,  but  surely  I  shall  not  be  accused 
of  commerical  collusion  if  I  point  out  that  so 
" generously  good"  a  philanthropist  as  George 
W.  Childs  became  a  name  literally  in  the  mouth 
of  thousands.  He  became  a  cigar.  Then  there 
was  Lord  Lister.  He,  too,  has  become  a  name 
in  the  mouths  of  thousands  —  as  a  mouth  wash. 
And  how  about  the  only  daughter  of  the  Prophet? 
Fatima  was  her  name. 


The  'Bubble,  Imputation  177 

Who  was  Lord  Raglan,  or  was  he  a  lord?  He 
is  a  kind  of  overcoat  sleeve  now.  Who  was  Mr. 
Mackintosh?  Was  it  Lord  Brougham,  too?  Gas 
olene  has  extinguished  his  immortality.  Gladstone 
has  become  a  bag,  Gainsborough  is  a  hat.  The 
beautiful  Madame  Pompadour,  beloved  of  kings, 
is  a  kind  of  hair-cut  now.  The  Mikado  of  Japan 
is  a  joke,  set  to  music,  heavenly  music,  to  be 
sure,  but  with  its  tongue  in  its  angelic  cheek. 
An  operetta  did  that.  You  cannot  think  of  the 
Mikado  of  Japan  in  terms  of  royal  dignity.  I 
defy  you  to  try.  Ko-ko  and  Katisha  keep  get 
ting  in  the  way,  and  you  hear  the  pitty-pat 
of  Yum-Yum's  little  feet,  and  the  bounce  of 
those  elliptical  billiard  balls.  Gilbert  and  Sulli 
van's  operetta  is  perhaps  the  most  potent  doc 
ument  for  democracy  since  the  Communist 
Manifesto ! 

The  other  day  I  heard  a  woman  say  that  she 
had  got  to  begin  banting.  A  nice  verb,  to  bant, 
though  not  approved  of  by  the  dictionary,  which 
scornfully  terms  it  "humorous  and  colloquial". 
The  humor,  to  be  sure,  is  usually  for  other  peo 
ple,  not  for  the  person  banting.  Do  you  know, 
I  wonder,  the  derivation  of  this  word?  It  means, 
of  course,  to  induce  this  too,  too  solid  flesh  to 
melt,  by  the  careful  avoidance  of  farinaceous, 
saccharine  and  oily  foods,  and  occasionally  its 
meaning  is  stretched  by  the  careless  to  include 
also  rolling  on  the  bedroom  floor  fifteen  times 

'3 


178  The  'Bubble,  Imputation 

before  breakfast,  and  standing  up  twenty  minutes 
after  meals.  Yet  the  word  is  derived  from  the 
name  of  William  Banting,  who  was  a  London 
cabinet-maker.  Cabinet-making  is  a  worthy  trade; 
indeed,  it  is  one  of  the  most  appealing  of  all 
trades;  in  fact,  it's  not  a  trade,  it's  an  art.  I 
haven't  a  doubt  that  William  made  splendid  fur 
niture,  especially  chairs,  for  nobody  appreciates 
a  nice,  roomy,  strong  chair  like  a  fat  man.  I 
haven't  a  doubt  that  it  was  his  ambition  in  life 
to  be  remembered  for  his  furniture,  even  as  the 
brothers  Adam,  as  Chippendale  and  Sheraton.  But 
it  was  not  to  be.  In  an  unfortunate  moment, 
William  discovered  that  by  eating  fewer  potatoes 
and  cutting  out  two  lumps  of  sugar  from  his  tea 
he  could  take  off  some  of  the  corpulence  that 
troubled  him.  He  told  of  his  discovery — and  the 
world  knows  him  now  as  a  method  of  getting 
number  44  ladies  into  a  perfect  38.  I  have  al 
ways  felt  sorry  for  William  Banting.  He  is  one 
of  the  tragic  figures  of  history. 

Of  course,  there  are  many  more,  if  none  other 
quite  so  poignant,  but  you  must  recall  them  for 
yourself.  For  some  paragraphs  now  I  have  been 
working  up  to  a  climax  of  prophecy.  I  have 
been  planning  to  predicl:  what  Kaiser  William  II 
will  be  noted  for  in  the  days  that  are  to  come.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  would  ma.)^  rather  a  neat  con 
clusion  for  this  little  essay.  But,  Gentle  Reader. 
I've  got  to  turn  that  job  over  to  you,  also. 


The  'Bubble,  Imputation 


179 


Not  that  the  space  is  lacking,  but  after  long  and 
painful  concentration  I  have  been  unable  to  think 
of  anything  bad  enough.  It  may  turn  out  that 
he  will  be  known  simply  by  the  meek  and  nourish 
ing  kaiser  roll  on  the  breakfast  table — the  only 
surviving  relic  of  a  monarchical  vocabulary  in  a 
peaceful  and  democratic  universe.  Perhaps,  for 
him,  that  would  be  the  bitterest  fate  of  all,  the 
ultimate  irony. 


The  Old  House  on  the 

I  WONDER  if  other  wayfarers  through  New  En 
gland  greet,  as  I  do,  with  special  affection  the 
old  house  on  the  bend  of  the  road?  It  is  so 
characteristic  of  an  earlier  civilization,  so  sug 
gestive  of  a  vanished  epoch — and  withal  so  pic 
turesque!  Even  if  you  are  unfortunate  enough 
to  "tour"  in  a  motor-car,  which  of  course  is  far 
from  the  ideal  way  to  savor  the  countryside,  still 
you  cannot  miss  the  old  house  on  the  bend,  even 
though  you  do  miss  the  feel  of  the  land,  the  rise 
and  dip  of  the  road,  the  fragrance  of  the  clematis 
by  the  wall,  the  already  fading  gold  of  the  evening 
primroses  when  you  start  off  after  breakfast. 

Even  for  a  motorist,  however,  the  old  house 
on  the  bend  stands  up  to  view,  especially  if  you 
are  on  the  front  seat  with  the  driver.  The  car 
swings  into  a  straightaway,  lined,  perhaps,  with 
sugar-maples  and  gray  stone  walls.  Between  the 
trunks  are  vistas  of  the  green  fields  and  far  hills. 
But  the  chief  vista  is  up  the  white  perspective 
of  the  road,  which  seems  to  vanish  dire6Uy  into 
the  front  door  of  the  solid,  mouse- gray  house 
on  the  bend. 


The  Old  House  on  the  'Bend  1 8 1 

The  ribbon  of  road  rushes  toward  you,  as  if 
a  great  spool  under  your  wheels  were  winding  it 
up.  The  house  rushes  on  with  it;  grows  nearer; 
details  emerge.  You  see  the  great  square  chim 
ney;  the  tiny  window-panes,  six  to  a  sash,  some 
of  them  turned  by  time,  not  into  the  purple  of 
Beacon  Hill  but  into  a  kind  of  prismatic  sheen 
like  oil  on  water;  the  bit  of  classic  egg-and-dart 
border  on  the  door-cap;  the  aged  texture  of  the 
weathered  clapboard;  the  graceful  arch  of  the 
wide  woodshed  entrance,  on  the  kitchen  side; 
the  giant  elm  rising  far  above  the  roof.  You 
rush  on  so  near  to  the  house,  indeed,  that  the 
car  seems  in  imminent  danger  of  colliding  with 
the  front  door,  when  suddenly  the  wheels  bite 
the  road,  you  feel  the  pull  of  centrifugul  force, 
and  the  car  swings  away  at  right  angles,  leaving 
an  end  view  of  the  ancient  dwelling  behind  you, 
so  that  when  you  turn  for  a  final  glance  you  see 
the  long  slant  of  the  roof  at  the  rear,  going  down 
within  six  or  eight  feet  of  the  ground. 

Such  is  the  view  from  the  motor-car.  If  you 
are  traveling  on  foot,  however,  there  is  much 
more  to  be  observed,  such  as  the  great  doorstep 
made  from  a  broken  millstone,  the  gigantic  ram 
bler  by  the  kitchen  window,  the  tiger-lilies  gone 
wild  in  the  dooryard,  and  above  all,  the  view 
from  the  front  windows.  Since  the  house  was 
visible  far  up  the  road,  conversely  a  long  stretch 
of  the  road  is  visible  from  the  house.  Standing 


1 82  The  Old  House  on  the  *Bend 

in  front  of  it,  you  can  see  a  motor  or  wagon 
approaching  a  mile  away,  and  from  the  end 
windows,  too,  can  be  seen  all  approaching  vehi 
cles  from  the  other  angle.  Moreover,  if  you  lived 
within,  you  could  not  only  see  who  was  coming, 
but  you  could  step  out  of  your  door  a  pace  or 
two  and  converse  with  him  as  he  passed.  The 
old  house  is  strategically  placed. 

When  it  was  built,  a  century  or  even  a  cen 
tury  and  a  half  ago,  no  motors  went  by  on  that 
road,  and  not  enough  of  any  kind  of  traffic  to 
raise  a  dust.  The  busy  town  to  the  south,  the 
summer  resort  to  the  north,  were  alike  small 
villages,  given  over  to  agriculture.  There  were 
no  telephones,  no  newspapers  even.  Fortunate 
indeed  was  the  man  whose  farm  abutted  on  a 
bend,  for  there  he  could  set  his  house,  close  to 
the  road,  viewing  the  approaches  in  either  direc 
tion,  and  no  traveler  could  get  by  him,  or  at  any 
rate  by  his  wife,  without  yielding  the  latest  gos 
sip  from  the  town  above  or  below,  perhaps  from 
the  greater  world  beyond.  The  highroad  was 
then  the  sole  artery  of  commerce,  of  communi 
cation,  of  intercourse  of  man  with  man. 

How  neighborly  was  the  house  on  the  bend, 
shedding  its  parlor-candle  rays  like  a  beacon  by 
night  down  the  mile  of  straightaway,  or  flapping 
its  chintz  curtains  in  the  June  sunshine!  What  a 
testimony  it  is,  in  its  present  gray  ruin,  to  the  hu 
man  hunger  for  news  and  gossip  and  friendliness! 


The  Old  House  on  the  ^end  183 

The  old  order  has  changed,  indeed.  We  no 
longer  build  on  the  bend.  We  don't  have  bends 
if  we  can  help  it.  They  are  dangerous  and  hard 
to  maintain.  A  house  on  one  would  be  uninhab 
itable  with  the  dust.  We  do  not  seek  the  neigh- 
borliness  of  the  road,  but  retire  as  far  as  we  can 
to  the  back  of  our  lot,  with  our  telephone  and 
newspaper.  The  old  house  on  the  bend  now 
stands  deserted.  From  country  estates  dimly  seen 
in  their  remote  privacy  of  trees  and  gardens,  the 
stone  highway  leads  to  other  estates  equally  re 
mote  and  scornful  of  publicity.  Between  them 
the  motors  rush.  The  old  house  is  dusty  and 
falling  into  ruin,  and  every  passing  car  kicks  up 
some  bit  of  crushed  stone  into  its  tangled  door- 
yard.  It  looks  pathetically  down  the  road  with 
unseeing  eyes,  the  last  relic  of  a  vanishing  order. 


Concerning  Hat-trees 

IT  is  well  sometimes,  when  we  are  puffed  up 
with  our  achievements  as  a  race, — our  conquest 
of  the  elements,  our  building  of  mighty  bridges 
and  lofty  sky-scrapers,  our  invention  of  wireless 
telegraphy  and  horseless  carriages  and  aeroplanes 
and  machine  guns  and  secret  diplomacy  and 
wage  slavery  and  war, — it  is  well  to  indulge  in 
the  chastening  reflection  that  there  are  still  some 
things  we  cannot  achieve.  We  may  reflect  that 
the  appleless  Eden  has  not  yet  been  discovered, 
or  that  the  adtor  without  vanity  is  yet  unborn, 
or  the  "treasonless"  Senate  yet  unassembled. 
My  own  method  is  to  reflect  that  the  ideal  hat- 
tree  has  never  been  constructed. 

At  present  I  have  no  hat-tree,  because  I  live  in 
an  old  farm  house  where  there  is  a  square  piano 
and  a  hall  closet,  and  we  don't  need  one.  In  New 
York  I  never  had  one,  either,  because  there  is 
never  room  in  the  hall-way  of  a  modern  appart- 
ment  both  for  a  hat-tree  and  a  passage-way.  But 
occasionally  I  visit  at  the  homes  of  friends  who 
boast  one  of  these  arboreal  adornments,  and  re- 


Concerning  Hat-trees  185 

new  my  acquaintance  with  the  species.  I  was 
to  take  a  walk  with  one  of  these  friends  the 
other  day. 

"Wait/'  he  said,  pausing  in  the  hall,  "till  I 
get  a  pair  of  gloves/ '  Stooping  over,  he  pulled 
at  the  hat-tree  drawer.  First  is  stuck  on  one 
side;  then  it  stuck  on  the  other  side;  then  it 
yielded  altogether,  without  warning.  My  friend 
sat  down  on  the  floor,  the  ridiculously  shallow 
drawer  in  his  hand,  between  his  feet  a  sorry 
array  of  the  odds  and  ends  of  the  outside  toilet, 
— broken  hat  pins,  old  veils,  buttons,  winter 
gloves  rolled  into  wads,  old  gloves,  new  gloves, 
gloves  pulled  off  in  a  hurry  with  the  fingers  in 
side  out,  dirty  white  gloves  belonging  to  his 
charming  sister.  I  turned  away,  feeling  that  I 
gazed  on  a  domestic  exposure.  My  friend  spoke 
softly  to  the  drawer. 

"Sh!"  said  I,  "your  family!  Put  the  drawer 
back." 

"I  will  not  put  it  back,"  he  said.  "We  would 
never  get  started.  Let  the — " 

Again  I  cautioned  him,  and  we  set  out  on 
our  walk  leaving  the  litter  on  the  floor;  and  as 
we  tramped  through  the  marvelous  sky-scraper 
wilderness  which  is  Manhattan,  we  talked  of 
hat-trees,  and  the  futility  of  human  effort,  and 
sighed  for  a  new  Carlyle  to  write  the  philosophy 
of  the  hat-tree  drawer. 


1 86  Concerning  Hat-trees 

How  well  I  remembered  the  hat-tree  that 
sheltered  my  caps  in  youth,  beneath  the  pro 
tecting  foliage  of  the  paternal  greatcoat  and  the 
maternal  bonnet!  I  did  not  always  use  it;  the 
piano  was  more  convenient,  or  the  floor.  But 
there  it  stood  in  the  hall  in  all  its  black-walnut 
impressive  ugliness,  with  side  racks  for  um 
brellas,  and  square,  metal  drip-pans  always  full 
of  the  family  rubbers.  There  was  a  mirror  in  the 
centre,  so  high  I  had  to  climb  three  stairs  to  see 
how  uncle's  hat  fitted  my  small  head.  There 
were  pegs  up  both  sides;  but,  as  is  the  way  with 
hat-trees,  only  the  top  ones  were  useful;  what 
ever  was  hung  on  them  buried  everything  be 
low.  The  only  really  safe  place  was  the  peak 
on  top,  just  above  the  carved  face  of  Minerva. 
Sometimes  the  paternal  greatcoat  lovingly  carried 
off  the  maternal  shawl  of  a  morning,  which 
would  be  found  later  somewhere  between  the 
door  and  the  station.  And  this  hat-tree  also  had 
a  drawer,  of  course.  There  was  the  rub,  indeed! 

Summer  or  winter,  wet  or  dry,  that  drawer 
always  stuck.  It  had  but  one  handle, — a  ring 
in  the  middle.  First  one  side  would  come  out 
too  far,  and  you  would  knock  it  back  and  pull 
again.  Then  the  other  side  would  come  out 
too  far,  and  you  would  knock  that  back.  Then 
both  sides,  by  diabolical  agreement,  would  sud 
denly  work  as  on  greased  ways,  and  you  stood 
with  an  astonishingly  shallow  drawer  dangling 


Concerning  Hat-trees  187 

from  your  finger,  its  long-accumulated  contents 
spread  on  the  floor.  The  shock  usually  sent 
down  two  derbies  and  a  bonnet  to  add  to  the  con 
fusion.  When  you  had  gathered  up  the  litter  and 
stuffed  it  back,  wondering  how  so  small  a  space 
ever  held  so  much,  the  still  harder  task  con 
fronted  you  of  putting  the  drawer  in  its  grooves 
again.  Sometimes  you  succeeded;  more  often 
you  left  it  "for  mother  to  do" — that  depended 
on  your  temper  and  the  time  of  your  train.  The 
drawer  was  a  charnel-house  of  gloves  and  mittens 
and  veils.  When  you  cut  your  finger  you  were 
sent  to  it  to  get  a  "cot",  and  it  had  a  peculiar 
smell  of  its  own,  the  smell  of  the  hat-tree 
drawer.  A  whiff  of  old  gloves  still  brings  that 
odor  back  to  me,  out  of  childhood,  stirring 
memories  of  little  garments  worn  long  ago,  of 
a  great  blue  cape  that  was  a  pride  to  my  father's 
heart  and  a  wound  to  my  mother's  pride, — but 
most  of  all  of  lost  temper  and  incipient  profanity 
caused  by  the  baulky  drawer. 

My  friend's  recollections  but  supplemented 
and  reinforced  my  own.  We  called  to  mind 
other  hat-trees  in  houses  where  we  had  visited, 
and  one  and  all  they  were  alike  perverse,  ridicu 
lous,  ill-adapted  for  their  mission  in  life.  We 
thought  of  various  substitutes  for  the  hat-tree, 
such  as  a  pole  with  pegs  in  it,  which  tips  over 
when  the  preponderance  of  weight  is  hung  on 
one  side;  the  cluster  of  pegs  on  a  frame  sus- 


1 88  Concerning  Hat-trees 

pended  from  the  wall  like  a  picture,  while  a 
painted  drain-pipe  courts  umbrellas  in  a  corner; 
a  long,  low  table  (only  possible  in  a  palatial  hall) 
on  which  the  garments  are  placed  by  the  butler 
in  assorted  piles,  so  that  you  feel  like  asking  him 
for  a  check;  the  settle,  often  disastrous  to  hats. 
We  found  none  of  them  satisfactory,  though  they 
eliminate  the  perils  of  the  drawer. 

Only  the  wooden  pegs  which  were  driven  in 
a  horizontal  row  into  the  board  walls  of  grand 
father's  back  entry  ever  approximated  the  ideal. 
But  such  a  reversion  to  primitive  principles 
would  now  be  considered  out  of  the  question, 
even  in  my  farm  house — by  the  farmer's  wife,  at 
least.  The  problem  of  a  satisfactory  hat-tree, 
which  baffled  the  genius  of  Chippendale,  is  still 
unsolved  in  Grand  Rapids,  and  it  probably  will 
remain  unsolved  to  the  end  of  time,  unless  Eden 
should  be  found  again,  where  the  hat-tree  is  the 
least  of  the  arboreal  troubles. 


"The  Shrinking  oflQngmaris  Field 

"Ir  WAS  rats,"  said  I. 

"It  was  warts,"  said  Old  Hundred. 

"I  know  it  was  rats,  I  tell  you,"  I  continued, 
"because  my  uncle  Eben  knew  a  man  who  did 
it.  His  house  was  full  of  rats,  so  he  wrote  a 
very  polite  note  to  them,  setting  forth  that, 
much  as  he  enjoyed  their  excellent  society,  the 
house  was  too  crowded  for  comfort,  and  telling 
them  to  go  over  to  the  house  of  a  certain  neigh 
bor,  who  had  more  room  and  no  children  nor 
cats.  And  the  rats  all  went." 

Old  Hundred  listened  patiently.  "That's 
precisely  right,"  said  he,  "except  it  must  have 
been  warts.  You  have  to  be  polite,  and  also  tell 
them  where  to  go.  You  rub  the  warts  with  a 
bean,  wrap  the  bean  up  in  the  note,  and  burn 
both,  or 'else  throw  them  in  the  well.  In  a  few 
days  the  warts  will  leave  you  and  appear  on  the 
other  fellow.  My  grandfather,  when  he  was 
a  boy,  got  warts  that  way,  so  he  licked  the 
other  boy." 

"Rats!"  said  I. 

"No,  warts,"  persisted  Old  Hundred. 


190         The  Shrinking  of  Kingmari s  Field 

So  that  was  how  we  two  aging  and  urbanized 
codgers  came  to  leave  the  comfortable  club  for 
the  Grand  Central  Station,  whence  we  sent 
telegrams  to  our  families  and  took  train  for  the 
rural  regions  north-eastward.  The  point  had  to 
be  settled.  Besides,  I  stumped  Old  Hundred  to 
go,  and  he  never  could  refuse  a  stump. 
,  But  Old  Hundred  was  fretful  on  the  journey. 
We  called  him  Old  Hundred  years  ago,  because 
he  always  proposed  that  tune  at  Sunday  evening 
meetings,  when  the  leader  "called  for  hymns." 
I  address  him  as  Old  Hundred  still,  though  he 
is  a  learned  lawyer  in  line  for  a  judgeship.  He 
was  fretful,  he  said,  because  we  were  sure  to  be 
terribly  disillusioned.  But  he  is  not  a  man  ac 
customed  in  these  later  years  to  a  61  on  impulse, 
and  the  prospect  of  a  night  on  a  sleeping  car, 
without  pajamas,  did  not,  I  fancy,  appeal  to  him, 
now  that  he  faced  it  from  the  badly  ventilated 
car  aisle,  instead  of  the  club  easy-chair.  Yet  per 
haps  he  did  dread  the  disillusionment,  too.  It 
was  always  I,  even  when  we  were  boys,  who 
loved  an  adventure  for  its  own  sake,  quite  apart 
from  the  pleasure  or  pain  of  it — taking  a  su 
preme  delight,  in  fact,  in  melancholy.  I  have 
still  a  copy  of  Moore's  poems,  stained  with  tears 
and  gingerbread.  Some  of  the  happiest  hours  of 
my  childhood  were  spent  in  weeping  over  this 
book,  especially  over  "Go  Where  Glory  Waits 
Thee,"  which  affected  me  with  an  incompre- 


The  Shrining  of  Kingmarf  s  Field        191 

hensible  but  poignant  woe.  Accordingly  it  was  I 
who  rose  cheerful  in  the  morning  and  piloted  a 
gloomy  companion  to  breakfast  and  a  barber, 
and  so  across  Boston  to  the  dingy  station  where 
dingy,  dirty  cars  of  ancient  vintage  awaited,  and 
in  one  of  which  we  rode,  with  innumerble  stops, 
to  a  spot  off  the  beaten  tracks  of  travel,  but 
which  bore  a  name  that  thrilled  us. 

When  we  alighted  from  the  train,  a  large 
factory  greeted  our  vision,  across  the  road  from 
the  railway  station.  We  walked  up  a  faintly  fa 
miliar  street  to  the  village  square.  There  we 
paused,  with  wry  faces.  Six  trolley  lines  con 
verged  in  its  centre,  and  out  of  the  surrounding 
country  were  rolling  in  great  cars,  as  big  almost 
as  Pullmans.  All  the  magnificent  horse-chestnut 
trees  that  once  lined  the  walks  were  down,  to 
expose  more  brazenly  to  view  the  rows  of  taw 
dry  little  shops.  These  trees  had  once  furnished 
shade  and  ammunition.  I  had  to  smile  at  the 
sign  above  the  new  fish-market — 

IF   IT   SWIMS WE    HAVE    IT. 

But  there  was  no  smile  on  Old  Hundred's  face. 
Here  and  there,  rising  behind  the  little  stores 
and  lunch  rooms,  we  could  detect  the  tops  of  the 
old  houses,  pushed  back  by  commerce.  But  most 
of  the  houses  had  disappeared  altogether.  Only 
the  old  white  meeting-house  at  the  head  of  the 
common  looked  down  benignly,  unchanged. 


192        The  Shrinking  of  Kingmarf  s  Field 

"The  trail  of  the  trolley  is  over  it  all!"  Old 
Hundred  murmured,  as  we  hastened  northward, 
out  of  the  village. 

After  we  had  walked  some  distance,  Old  Hun 
dred  said,  "It  ought  to  be  arouud  here  soriie- 
where,  to  the  right  of  the  road.  I  can't  make 
anything  out,  for  these  new  houses." 

"There  was  a  lane  down  to  it,"  said  I,  "and 
woods  beyond." 

"Sure,"  he  cried,  "Kingman's  woods;  and  it 
was  called  Kingman's  field." 

I  sighted  the  ruins  of  a  lane,  between  two 
houses.  "  Come  on  down  to  Kingman's,  fellers," 
I  shouted,  "an'  choose  up  sides!" 

Old  Hundred  followed  my  lead.  We  were  in 
the  middle  of  a  potato  patch,  in  somebody's  back 
yard.  It  was  very  small. 

"This  ain't  Kingman's,"  wailed  Old  Hundred, 
lasping  into  bad  grammer  in  his  grief.  "Why, 
it  took  an  awful  paste  to  land  a  home  run  over 
right  field  into  the  woods!  And  there  ain't  no 
woods!" 

There  weren't.  Nevertheless,  this  was  King 
man's  field.  "See,"  said  I,  trying  to  be  cheerful, 
"here's  where  home  was."  And  I  rooted  up  a 
potato  sprout  viciously.  "You  and  Bill  Nichols 
always  chose  up.  You  each  put  a  hand  round 
a  bat,  alternating  up  the  stick,  for  the  first  choice. 
The  one  who  could  get  his  hand  over  the  top 
enough  to  swing  the  bat  round  his  head  three 


The  Shrining  ofKingmarfs  Field         193 

times,  won,  and  chose  Goodknocker  Pratt.  First 
was  over  there  where  the  wall  isn't  any  more." 

"Remember  the  time  we  couldn't  find  my 
'Junior  League '/'said  Old  Hundred,  "and  Good- 
knocker  dreamed  it  was  in  a  tree,  and  the  next 
day  we  looked  in  the  trees,  and  there  it  was?  I 
wonder  what  ever  became  of  old  Goodknocker?" 

He  moved  toward  first  base.  The  woods  had 
been  ruthlessly  cut  down,  and  the  wall  dragged 
away  in  the  process.  We  climbed  a  knoll,  through 
the  stumps  and  dead  stuff.  At  the  top  was  a 
snake  bush. 

"Here's  something,  anyhow,"  said  Old  Hun 
dred.  "You  were  Uncas  and  I  was  Hawk  Eye, 
and  we  defended  this  snake  bush  from  Bill's 
crowd  of  Iroquois.  We  made  shields  out  of  bar 
rel  heads,  and  spears  out  of  young  pine-tree  tops. 
Wow,  how  they  hurt!" 

"About  half  a  mile  over  is  the  swamp  where 
the  traps  were,"  said  I.  "Let's  go.  Maybe  there's 
something  in  one  of  'em." 

"Then  times  would  be  changed,"  said  he, 
smiling  a  little. 

We  walked  a  few  hundred  feet,  and  there  was 
the  swamp,  quite  dried  up  without  the  protection 
of  the  woods,  a  tangle  of  dead  stuff,  and  in  plain 
view  of  half  a  dozen  houses.  "Why  "  cried  Old 
Hundred,  "it  was  miles  away  from  anything!" 

I  looked  at  him,  a  woeful  figure,  clad  in  im 
maculate  clothes,  with  gray  gloves,  a  cane  in  his 

14 


194        The  Shrinking  of  Kingman's  Field 

hand.  "'You  ought  to  be  wearing  red  mittens," 
said  I,  "and  carrying  that  old  shot-gun,  with  the 
ramrod  bent." 

"The  ramrod  was  always  bent,"  said  he.  "It 
kept  getting  caught  in  twigs,  or  falling  out.  Gee, 
how  she  kicked!  Remember  the  day  I  got  the 
rabbit  down  there  on  the  edge  of  the  swamp? 
It  made  the  snow  all  red,  poor  little  thing.  I 
guess  I  wasn't  so  pleased  as  I  expected  to  be." 

"I  remember  the  day  you  didn't  get  the  wood 
pussy — soon  enough,"  I  answered. 

Just  then  a  whistle  shrieked.  "Good  Lord," 
said  Old  Hundred,"  there's  one  of  those  infer 
nal  trolleys!  It  must  go  right  up  the  turnpike, 
past  Sandy." 

"Let's  take  it!"  I  cried. 

He  looked  at  me  savagely.  "We'll  walk!" 
he  said. 

"But  it's  miles  and  miles,"  I  remonstrated. 

"Nevertheless,"  said  he,  "we'll  walk." 

It  was  difficult  to  find  the  short  cut  in  this 
tangle  of  slaughtered  forest,  but  we  got  back  to 
the  road  finally,  coming  out  by  the  school-house. 
At  least,  we  came  out  by  a  little  shallow  hole  in 
the  ground,  half  filled  with  poison-ivy  and  fire- 
weed,  and  ringed  by  a  few  stones.  We  paused 
sadly  by  the  ruins. 

"I  suppose  the  trolly  takes  the  kids  into  the 
village  now,"  said  I.  "Centralization,  you  know." 


The  Shrinking  of  Kingmarf  s  Field        195 

"There  used  to  be  a  great  stove  in  one  corner, 
and  the  pipe  went  all  across  the  room,"  Old 
Hundred  was  saying,  as  if  to  himself.  "If  you 
sat  near  it,  you  baked;  if  you  didn't,  you  froze. 
Do  you  remember  Miss  Campbell?  What  was  it 
we  used  to  sing  about  her?  Oh,  yes — 

Three  little  mice  ran  up  the  stairs 
To  hear  Biddy  Campbell  say  her  prayers ; 
And  when  they  heard  her  say  Amen, 
The  three  little  mice  ran  down  again. 

And,  gee  but  you  were  the  punk  speller!  Re 
member  how  there  was  always  a  spelling  match 
Friday  afternoons?  I'll  never  forget  the  day  you 
fell  down  on  'nausea/  You'd  lasted  pretty  well 
that  day,  for  you;  everybody 'd  gone  down  but 
you  and  Myrtie  Swett  and  me  and  one  or  two 
more.  But  when  Biddy  CampbeU  put  that  word 
up  to  you,  you  looked  it,  if  you  couldn't  spell  it!" 

"Hum,"  said  I,  "I  wouldn't  rub  it  in,  if  I 
were  you.  I  seem  to  recall  a  public  day  when 
old  Gilman  Temple,  the  committee  man,  asked 
you  what  was  the  largest  bird  that  flies,  and  you 
said,  'The  Kangaroo.'" 

Old  Hundred  grinned.  "  That's  the  day  the 
new  boy  laughed,"  said  he.  "Remember  the 
new  boy?  I  mean  the  one  that  wore  the  derby 
which  we  used  to  push  down  over  his  eyes? 
Sometimes  in  the  yard  one  of  us  would  squat 


196        The  Shrinking  of  King  man's  Field 

behind  him,  and  then  somebody  else  would  push 
him  over  backward.  We  made  him  walk  Span 
ish,  too.  But  after  that  public  day  he  and  I  went 
way  down  to  the  horse-sheds  behind  the  meeting 
house  in  the  village,  and  had  it  out.  I  wonder 
why  we  always  fought  in  the  holy  horse-sheds? 
The  ones  behind  the  town  hall  were  never  used 
for  that  purpose/' 

This  was  true,  but  I  couldn't  explain  it.  "We 
couldn't  always  wait  to  get  to  the  horse-sheds, 
as  I  remember  it,"  said  I.  "Sometimes  we  couldn't 
wait  to  get  out  of  sight  of  school." 

I  began  hunting  the  neighborhood  for  the  hide- 
and-seek  spots.  The  barn  and  the  carriage-shed 
across  the  road  were  still  there,  with  cracks  yawn 
ing  between  the  mouse-gray  boards.  The  shed 
was  also  ideal  for  "Anthony  over."  And  in  the 
pasture  behind  the  school  stood  the  great  boul 
der,  by  the  sassafras  tree.  "I'll  bet  you  can't 
count  out,"  said  I. 

"Pooh!"  said  Old  Hundred.  He  raised  his 
finger,  pointed  it  at  an  imaginary  line  of  boys 
and  girls,  and  chanted — 

"Acker,  backer,  soda  cracker, 

Acker,  backer,  boo! 
If  yer  father  chews  terbacker, 
Out  goes  you. 

And  now  you're  it,"  he  finished  pointing  at  me. 


The  Shrinking  ofKingmarfs  Field         197 

I  was  not  to  be  outdone.  "Ten,  twenty,  thirty, 
forty,  — "  I  began  to  mumble.  Then,  "One 
thousand!"  I  shouted. 

"Bushel  o'  wheat  and  a  bushel  o'  rye, 
All 't  'aint  hid,  holler  knee  high!" 

I  looked  for  a  stick,  stood  it  on  end,  and  let  it 
fall.  It  fell  toward  the  boulder.  "You're  up  in 
the  sassafras  tree,"  I  said. 

"No,"  said  Old  Hundred,  "that's  Benny." 

Then  we  looked  at  each  other  and  laughed. 

"You  poor  old  idiot,"  said  Old  Hundred. 

"You  doddering  imbecile,"  said  I,  "come  on 
up  to  Sandy." 

Somehow,  it  wasn't  far  to  Sandy.  It  used  to 
be  miles.  We  passed  by  Myrtie  Swett's  house 
on  the  way.  It  stood  back  from  the  turnpike 
just  as  ever,  with  its  ample  doorway,  its  great 
shadowing  elms,  its  air  of  haughty  well-being. 
Myrtie,  besides  a  prize  speller,  was  something 
of  a  social  queen.  She  was  very  beautiful  and 
she  affefted  ennui. 

"Oh,  dear,  bread  and  beer, 
If  I  was  home  I  shouldn't  be  here!" 

she  used  to  say  at  parties,  with  a  tired  air  that 
was  the  secret  envy  of  the  other  little  girls,  who 
were  unable  to  conceal  their  pleasure  at  being 
"here."  However,  Myrtie  never  went  home, 
we  noticed.  Rather  did  she  take  a  leading  part 


198        The  Shrinking  of  Kingman  s  Field 

in  every  game  of  Drop- the -hankerchief,  Post 
Office,  or  Copenhagen — tinglingly  thrilling 
games,  with  unknown  possibilities  of  a  senti 
mental  nature. 

"If  I  thought  she  still  lived  in  the  old  place, 
I'd  go  up  and  tell  her  I  had  a  letter  for  her," 
said  Old  Hundred. 

"She'd  probably  give  you  a  stamp,"  I  replied. 

"Not  unless  she's  changed!"  he  grinned. 

But  we  saw  no  signs  of  Myrtie.  Several  chil 
dren  played  in  the  yard.  There  was  the  face  of 
a  strange  woman  at  the  window,  a  very  plain 
woman,  who  looked  old,  as  she  peered  keenly 
at  the  two  urban  passers. 

"It  cant  be  Myrtie!"  I  heard  Old  Hundred 
mutter,  as  he  hastened  on. 

Sandy  was  almost  the  most  wonderful  spot  in 
the  world.  It  was,  as  most  swimming  holes  are, 
on  the  down-stream  side  of  a  bridge.  The  little 
river  widened  out,  on  its  way  through  the  mead 
ows,  here  and  there  into  swimming  holes  of 
greater  or  less  desirability.  There  was  Lob's 
Pond,  by  the  mill,  and  Deep  Pool,  and  Musk 
Rat,  and  Little  Sandy.  But  Sandy  was  the  best 
of  them  all.  It  was  shaded  on  one  side  by  great 
trees,  and  the  banks  were  hidden  from  the  road 
by  alder  screens.  At  one  end  there  was  a  shelv 
ing  bottom,  of  clean  sand,  where  the  "little  kids" 
who  couldn't  swim  sported  in  safety.  Under  the 
opposite  bank  the  water  ran  deep  for  diving.  And 


"The  Shrinking  of  Kingmans  Field         1 99 

in  mid-stream  the  pool  was  so  very  deep  that  no 
body  had  ever  been  able  to  find  bottom  there. 
In  the  other  holes,  you  could  hold  your  hands 
over  your  head  and  go  down  till  your  feet  touched, 
without  wetting  your  fingers.  But  not  the  long 
est  fish-line  had  ever  been  long  enough  to  plumb 
Sandy's  depths.  Indeed,  it  was  popularly  believed 
that  there  was  no  bottom  in  Sandy,  and  a  myth 
ical  horn  pout,  of  gigantic  proportions,  was  sup 
posed  to  inhabit  its  dark,  watery  abysses. 

Old  Hundred  and  I  stood  on  the  bridge  and 
looked  down  on  a  little  pool.  "I  could  jump 
across  it  now,"  he  sighed.  "But  I  wish  it  were 
a  warmer  day.  I'd  go  in,  just  the  same.'' 

There  was  a  honk  up  the  road,  and  a  touring 
car  jolted  over  the  boards  behind  us,  with  a  load 
of  veils  and  goggles.  The  dust  sifted  through 
the  bridge,  and  we  heard  it  patter  on  the  water 
below. 

"I  fancy  there's  more  travel  now,"  said  I. 
"And  the  alder  screen  seems  to  be  gone.  Per 
haps  we'd  better  not  go  in." 

Old  Hundred  leaned  pensively  over  the  white 
rail — the  sign  of  a  State  highway;  for  the  dusty 
old  Turnpike  was  now  converted  into  a  gray 
strip  of  macadam  road,  torn  by  the  automobiles, 
with  a  trolley  track  at  one  side. 

"There's  a  lucky  bug  on  the  water,"  he  said 
presently.  "If  we  were  in  now,  we  might  catch 
him,  and  make  our  fortunes." 


2OO         The  Shrinking  of  Kingman's  Field 

"And  get  our  clothes  tied  up,"  said  I. 

"As  I  recall  it,  you  were  the  prize  beef 
chawer,"  he  remarked.  "I  never  could  see  why 
you  didn't  go  into  vaudeville,  in  a  Houdini  acl:. 
I  used  to  soak  the  knots  in  your  shirt  and  dry 
'em,  and  soak  'em  again;  but  you  always  untied 
'em,  often  without  using  your  teeth,  either." 

"You  couldn't,  though,"  I  grinned. 

"Charlo  beef, 
The  beef  was  tough, 
Poor  Old  Hundred 
Couldn't  get  enough! 

"How  many  times  have  you  gone  home  bare 
foot,  with  your  stockings  and  your  undershirt, 
in  a  wet  knot,  tied  to  your  fish-pole?" 

"Not  many,"  said  he. 

"What?"  said  I. 

"It  wasn't  often  that  I  wore  stockings  and 
an  undershirt  in  swimming  season,"  he  an 
swered.  "Don't  you  remember  being  made  to 
soak  your  feet  in  a  tub  on  the  back  porch  be 
fore  going  to  bed,  and  going  fast  asleep  in  the 
process?" 

"If  you  put  a  horse  hair  in  water,  it  will  turn 
to  a  snake,"  I  replied,  irrelevantly. 

"Anybody  knows  that,"  said  Old  Hundred. 
"If  you  toss  a  fish  back  in  the  water  before 
you're  done  fishing,  you  won't  get  any  more 
bites,  because  he'll  go  tell  all  the  other  fish.  Bet 


The  Shrinking  of  Kingman's  Field        201 

yer  I  can  swim  farther  under  the  water  'n  you 
can.  Come  on,  it  isn't  very  cold." 

I  looked  hesitantly  at  the  pool. 

"Stump  yer!"  he  taunted. 

I  started  for  the  bank.  But  just  then  the 
trolley  wire,  which  we  had  quite  forgotten,  be 
gan  to  buzz.  We  paused.  Up  the  pike  came 
the  car.  It  stopped  just  short  of  the  bridge,  by 
a  cross-road,  and  an  old  man  alighted.  Then  it 
moved  on,  shaking  more  dust  down  upon  the 
brown  water.  The  old  man  regarded  us  a  mo 
ment,  and  instead  of  turning  up  the  cross-road, 
came  over  to  us. 

!"Know  him?"  I  whispered.) 
"Is  it  Hen  Flint,  that  used  to  drive  the  meat 
wagon  with  the  white  top?"  said  Old  Hundred* 
"Lord,  is  it  so  many  years  ago!") 

"How  are  you,  Mr.  Flint?"  said  I. 

"Thot  I  didn't  mistake  ye,"  said  the  old  man, 
putting  out  a  large,  thin,  but  powerful  hand. 
"Whar  be  ye  now,  Noo  York?  Come  back  to 
look  over  the  old  place,  eh?  I  reckon  ye  find  it 
some  changed.  Don't  know  it  myself,  hardly. 
You  look  like  yer  ma;  sorter  got  her  peak  face." 

"Where's  the  swimming  hole  now?"  asked 
Old  Hundred. 

"I  don't  calc'late  thar  be  any,"  said  the  old 
man.  "The  gol  durn  trolley  an'  the  automobiles 
spiled  the  pool  here,  an'  the  mill-pond's  no  good 
since  they  tore  down  the  mill,  an'  bust  the  dam. 


202         The  Shrinking  of  Kingman  s  Field 

Maybe  the  little  fellers  git  their  toes  wet  down 
back  o'  Bill  Flint's;  I  see  'em  splashin'  round 
thar  hot  days.  But  the  old  fellers  have  to  wash 
in  the  kitchen,  same's  in  winter." 

"But  the  boys  must  swim  somewhere/'  said  I. 

"I  presume  likely  they  go  to  the  beaches/' 
said  Henry  Flint.  "I  see  'em  ridin'  off  in  the 
trolley." 

"Yes,"  said  I,  "it  must  be  easy  to  get  any 
where  now,  with  the  trolleys  so  thick." 

"It's  too  durn  easy,"  he  commented.  "Thar 
hain't  a  place  ye  can't  git  to,  though  why  ye 
should  want  to  git  thar  beats  me.  Mostly  puts 
high-flown  notions  in  the  women-folks'  heads, 
and  vegetable  gardens  on  'em." 

He  shook  hands  again,  lingeringly.  "Yer  fa 
ther  wus  a  fine  man,"  he  said  to  Old  Hundred 
— "a  fine  man.  I  sold  yer  ma  meat  before  you 
wus  born." 

Then  he  moved  rather  feebly  away,  down  the 
cross-road.  Presently  a  return  trolley  approached. 

"Curse  the  trolleys!"  exclaimed  Old  Hun 
dred.  'They  go  everywhere  and  carry  every 
body.  They  spoil  the  country  roads  and  ruin 
the  country  houses  and  villages.  Where  they  go, 
cheap  loafing  places,  called  waiting-rooms,  spring 
up,  haunted  by  flies,  rotten  bananas  and  village 
muckers.  They  trail  peanut  shells,  dust  and 
vulgarity;  and  they  make  all  the  country-side  a 
back  yard  of  the  city.  Let's  take  this  one." 


The  Shrinking  of  Kingmarf  s  Field        203 

We  passed  once  more  the  hole  where  the 
school  had  been,  and  drew  near  a  cross-road. 
I  looked  at  Old  Hundred,  he  at  me.  He  nodded, 
and  we  signalled  the  conductor.  The  car  stopped. 
We  alighted  and  turned  silently  west,  pursued 
by  peering  eyes.  After  a  few  hundred  feet  the 
cross-road  went  up  a  rise  and  round  a  bend,  and 
the  new  frame  houses  along  the  Turnpike  were 
shut  from  view.  Over  the  brambled  wall  we  saw 
cows  lying  down  in  a  pasture. 

"It's  going  to  rain/'  said  I. 

"No,"  said  Old  Hundred,  "that's  only  a  sign 
when  they  lie  down  first  thing  in  the  morn- 
ing." 

Then  we  were  silent  once  more.  Into  the  west 
the  land,  the  rocky,  rolling,  stubborn,  beautiful 
New  England  country-side,  lay  familiar — how  fa 
miliar! — to  our  eyes.  To  the  left,  back  among  the 
oaks  and  hickories,  stood  a  solid,  simple  house, 
painted  yellow  with  green  blinds.  To  the  right  al 
most  opposite  was  a  smaller  house  of  white,  with 
an  orchard  straggling  up  to  the  back  door.  And 
in  one  of  them  I  was  born,  and  in  the  other  Old 
Hundred.  Down  the  road  was  another  house, 
a  deep  red,  half  hidden  in  the  trees.  Smoke 
was  rising  from  the  chimney  now,  and  drifting 
rosily  against  the  first  flush  of  sunset. 

"Betsy's  getting  Cap'n  Charles's  supper,"  said 
Old  Hundred. 


204        The  Shrining  ofKlngmans  Field 

"Then  Betsy's  about  one  hundred  and  six," 
said  I,  "and  the  Cap'n  one  hundred  and  ten. 
Oh,  John,  it  was  a  long,  long  time  ago!" 

"It  doesn't  seem  so,"  he  answered.  "It  seems 
only  yesterday  that  we  met  up  there  in  your 
grove  on  Hallow-e'en  to  light  our  jack-lanterns, 
and  crept  down  the  road  in  the  cold  white  moon 
light  to  poke  them  up  at  Betsy's  window.  Re 
member  when  she  caught  us  with  the  pail  of 
water?" 

"I  remember,"  said  I,  "the  time  you  put  a 
tack  in  the  seat  of  Cap'n  Charles's  stool,  in  his 
little  shoemaker's  shop  out  behind  the  house,  and 
he  gave  you  five  cents,  to  return  good  for  evil; 
so  the  next  day  you  did  it  again,  in  the  hope  of 
a  quarter,  but  he  decided  there  were  times  when 
the  Golden  Rule  is  best  honored  in  the  breach, 
and  gave  you  a  walloping." 

"It  was  some  walloping,  too,"  said  Old  Hun 
dred,  with  a  reminiscent  grin.  "It  would  be  a 
good  time  now,"  he  added,  "to  swipe  melons,  if 
Betsy's  getting  supper.  Though  I  believe  she  had 
all  those  melon  stems  connected  with  an  auto 
matic  burglar-alarm  in  the  kitchen.  She  ought 
to  have  taken  out  a  patent  on  that  invention!" 

He  looked  about  him,  first  at  his  house,  then 
at  mine.  "How  small  the  orchard  is  now,"  he 
mused.  "The  trees  are  like  little  old  women. 
And  look  at  Crow's  Nest — it  used  to  be  a  hun 
dred  feet  high." 


The  Shrinking  of  Kingman's  Field        205 

The  oak  he  pointed  at  still  bore  in  its  upper 
branches  the  remains  of  our  tree-top  retreat,  a 
rotted  beam  or  two  straddling  a  crotch.  "  Peter 
Pan  should  rebuild  it,"  said  I.  "I  shall  drop  a 
line  to  Wendy.  Do  you  still  hesitate  to  turn 
over  in  bed?" 

"Always,"  Old  Hundred  confessed.  "I  do  turn 
over  now,  but  it  was  years  before  I  could  bring 
myself  to  do  it.  I  wonder  where  we  got  that  su 
perstition  that  it  brought  bad  luck?  If  we  woke 
in  the  night,  up  in  Crow's  Nest,  and  wanted 
to  shift  our  positions,  we  got  up  and  walked 
around  the  foot  of  the  mattress,  so  we  could 
lie  on  the  other  side  without  turning  over.  Re 
member?" 

I  nodded.  Then  the  well-curb  caught  my  eye. 
It  was  over  the  well  we  dug  where  old  Solon 
Perkins  told  us  to.  Solon  charged  three  dollars 
for  the  advice.  He  came  with  a  forked  elm 
twig,  cut  green,  and  holding  the  prongs  tightly 
wrapped  round  his  hands  so  that  the  base  of  the 
twig  stuck  out  straight,  walked  back  and  fourth 
over  the  place,  followed  by  my  father  and  mother, 
and  Old  Hundred's  father  and  mother,  and  Cap'n 
Charles  and  Betsy,  and  all  the  boys  for  a  mile 
around,  silently  watching  for  the  miracle.  Fi 
nally  the  base  of  the  twig  bent  sharply  down. 
"Dig  there,"  said  Solon.  He  examined  the  twig 
to  see  if  the  bark  was  twisted.  It  was,  so  he 
added,  "Bent  hard.  Won't  have  ter  dig  more'n 


206         The  Shrining  of  Kingmarf  s  Field 

ten  foot."  We  dug  twenty-six,  but  water  came. 
And  such  water! 

"I  want  some  of  that  water,"  said  I.  "I 
don't  want  to  go  into  the  house;  I  don't  even 
know  who  lives  in  it  now.  But  I  must  have 
some  of  that  water." 

We  went  up  to  the  well  and  lowered  the 
bucket,  which  slid  bounding  down  against  the 
cool  stones  till  it  hit  the  depths  with  a  dull 
splash.  As  we  were  drinking,  an  old  man  came 
peering  out  of  the  house.  Old  Hundred  recog 
nized  him  first. 

"Well,  Clarkie  Poor,  by  all  that's  holy!"  he 
cried.  "We've  come  to  get  our  hair  cut." 

Clarkson  Poor  blinked  a  bit  before  recogni 
tion  came.  "Yes,"  he  said,  "I  bought  the  old 
place  a  couple  o'  year  back,  arter  them  city  folks 
you  sold  it  to  got  sick  on  it.  Too  fer  off  the  trol 
ley  line  for  them.  John's  house  over  yon  some 
noo  comers  'a'  got.  They  ain't  changed  it  none. 
This  is  about  the  only  part  o'  town  that  ain't 
changed,  though.  Most  o'  the  old  folks  is  gone, 
too,  and  the  young  uns,  like  you  chaps,  all  git 
ambitious  fer  the  cities.  I  give  up  cuttin'  hair 
'bout  three  year  back — got  kinder  onsteady  an' 
cut  too  many  ears." 

A  sudden  smile  broke  over  Old  Hundred's 
face.  "Clarkie,"  he  said,  "you  were  always  up 
on  such  things — is  it  rats  or  warts  that  you  write 
a  note  to  when  you  want  'em  to  go  away?" 


The  Sbrinfyng  ofKingmarfs  Field        207 

"Yes,  it's  rats,  isn't  it?"  I  cried,  also  reminded, 
for  the  first  time,  of  our  real  quest. 

"Why,"  said  Clarkie,  "you  must  be  sure  to 
make  the  note  very  particular  perlite,  and  tell 
'em  whar  to  go.  Don't  fergit  that." 

"Yes,  yes,"  said  we,  "but  is  it  warts  or  rats?" 

"Well,"  said  Clarkie,  "it's  both." 

We  looked  one  at  the  other,  and  grinned  rather 
sheepishly. 

"Only  thar's  a  better  way  fer  warts,"  Clarkie 
went  on.  "I  knew  a  boy  once  who  sold  his. 
That's  the  best  way.  Yer  don't  have  actually 
to  sell  'em.  Just  git  another  feller  to  say,  'I'll 
give  yer  five  cents  fer  yer  warts,'  and  you  say, 
'All  right,  they're  yourn/  and  then  they  go. 
Fad." 

We  thanked  him,  and  moved  down  to  the 
road,  declining  his  invitation  to  come  into  the 
house.  Westward,  the  sun  had  gone  down  and 
left  the  sky  a  glowing  amber  and  rose.  The  fields 
rolled  their  young  green  like  a  checkered  carpet 
over  the  low  hills — the  sweet,  familiar  hills.  For 
an  instant,  in  the  hush  of  gathering  twilight, 
we  stood  there  silent  and  bridged  the  years; 
wiping  out  the  strife,  the  toil,  the  ambitions,  we 
were  boys  again. 

"Hark!"  said  Old  Hundred,  softly.  Down 
through  the  orchard  we  heard  the  thin,  sweet 
tinkle  of  a  cow-bell.  "There's  a  boy  behind, 
with  the  peeled  switch,"  he  added,  "looking 


208         The  Shrinking  ofKingman  s  Field 

dreamily  up  at  the  first  star,  and  wishing  on  it — 
wishing  for  a  lot  of  things  he'll  never  get.  But 
Fm  sure  he  isn't  barefoot.  Let's  go." 

As  we  passed  down  the  turnpike,  between  the 
rows  of  cheap  frame  houses,  we  saw,  in  the  in 
creasing  dusk,  the  ruins  of  a  lane,  and  the  corner 
of  a  small,  back-yard  potato  patch,  that  had  been 
Kingman's  field.  We  hastened  through  the  noisy, 
treeless  village,  and  boarded  the  Boston  train, 
rather  cross  for  want  of  supper. 

"I  wonder,"  said  Old  Hundred,  as  we  moved 
out  of  the  station,  "whether  we'd  better  go  to 
Young's  or  the  Parker  House?" 


*%Cumblety-peg  and^Ciddk 

OLD  HUNDRED  and  I  were  taking  our  Saturday 
afternoon  walk  in  the  country — that  is,  in  such 
suburbanized  country  as  we  could  achieve  in  the 
neighborhood  of  New  York.  We  had  passed  in 
numerable  small  boys  and  not  a  few  small  girls, 
but  save  for  an  occasional  noisy  group  on  a  base 
ball  diamond  none  of  them  seemed  to  be  playing 
any  definite  games. 

"Did  we  use  to  wander  aimlessly  round  that 
way?"  asked  Old  Hundred. 

"We  did  not,"  said  I.  "If  it  wasn't  marbles 
in  spring  or  tops  in  autumn  it  was  duck-on-the- 
rock  or  stick-knife  or " 

"Only  we  didn't  call  it  stick-knife,"  said  Old 
Hundred,  "we  called  it  mumblety-peg." 

"We  called  it  stick-knife,"  said  I. 

"Your  memory  is  curiously  bad,"  said  Old 
Hundred.  "You  are  always  forgetting  about  these 
important  matters.  It  was  mumblety-peg." 

"My  memory  bad!"  I  sniffed.  "I  suppose 
you  think  I've  forgotten  how  I  always  licked 
you  at  stick-knife?" 

15 


2 1  o         *%Cuinblety-p€g  and  <3&iddle 

Old  Hundred  grinned.  Old  Hundred's  grin, 
to-day  as  much  as  thirty  years  ago,  is  a  mask 
for  some  coming  trouble.  He  always  grinned 
before  he  sailed  into  the  other  fellow,  which 
was  an  effective  way  to  catch  the  other  fellow 
off  his  guard.  I  presume  he  grins  now  before 
he  cross-questions  a  witness.  'Til  play  you  a 
game  right  now,"  he  said  softly. 

"You're  on,"  said  I. 

We  selected  a  spot  of  clean,  thin  turf  behind  a 
roadside  fence.  It  was  in  reality  a  part  of  some 
body's  yard,  but  it  was  the  best  we  could  do.  I  still 
carry  a  pocket-knife  of  generous  proportions,  to 
whittle  with  when  we  go  for  a  walk,  and  this  I  pro 
duced  and  opened,  handing  it  to  Old  Hundred. 
"Now  begin,"  said  I,  as  we  squatted  down. 

He  held  the  knife  somewhat  gingerly,  first  by 
the  blade,  then  by  the  handle.  "Wha — what  do 
you  do  first?"  he  finally  asked. 

"Do?"  said  I.   "Don't  you  remember?" 

"No,"  he  replied,  "and  neither  do  you." 

"Give  me  the  knife,"  I  cried.  I  relied  on  the 
feel  of  it  in  my  hand  to  awaken  a  dormant  mus 
cular  memory  to  help  me  out.  But  no  muscular 
memory  was  stirred.  Old  Hundred  watched  me 
with  a  smile.  "Begin,  begin!"  he  urged. 

"Let's  see,"  said  I,  "I  think  you  took  it  first 
by  the  tip  of  the  blade,  this  way,  and  made  it 
stick  up."  I  threw  the  knife.  It  stuck,  but  al 
most  lay  upon  the  ground. 


*J£umblety-peg  and  zJ&iddle  *Age          2 1 1 

"You've  got  to  get  two  fingers  under  it,"  said 
Old  Hundred.  He  tried,  but  there  wasn't  room. 
"You  fail,"  he  cried.  "There's  a  point  for  me." 

"Not  till  you've  made  it  stick,"  said  I. 

We  grew  interested  in  our  game.  We  threw 
the  knife  from  our  nose  and  chin,  we  dropped 
it  from  our  forehead,  we  jumped  it  over  our 
hand,  we  half-closed  the  blade  and  tossed  it 
that  way,  and  finally,  when  the  talley  was  reck 
oned  up  in  my  favor,  I  began  to  look  about  for  a 
stick  to  whittle  into  the  peg. 

Old  Hundred  rose  and  dusted  his  clothes. 
"Here,"  I  cried.  "You're  not  done  yet!" 

"Oh,  yes  I  am!"  he  answered. 

"Quitter,  quitter,  quitter!"  I  taunted. 

"That  may  be,"  said  he,  "but  a  learned  lawyer 
of  forty-five  with  a  dirty  mug  is  rather  more 
self-conscious  than  a  boy  of  ten.  I'll  buy  you 
a  dinner  when  we  get  to  town." 

"Oh,  very  well,"  said  I,  peevishly,  "but  I 
didn't  think  you'd  so  degenerated.  I'll  let  you 
off  if  you'll  admit  it  was  stick-knife." 

"I'll  admit  it,"  said  Old  Hundred.  "I  sup 
pose  in  a  minute  you'll  ask  me  to  admit  that 
prisoners' -base  was  relievo." 

"What  'was  relievo,  by  the  way?"  I  asked. 

"Relievo  — relievo?"  said  Old  Hundred. 
"Why  that  was  a  game  we  played  mostly  on 
the  ice,  up  on  Birch  Meadow,  don't  you  re 
member?  When  we  got  tired  of  hockey,  we 


212         *%Cumblety-ptg  an 

all  put  our  coats  and  hockey  sticks  in  a  pile,  one 
man  was  It,  and  the  rest  tried  to  skate  from  a 
distant  line  around  the  pile  and  back.  If  the 
chap  who  was  It  tagged  anybody  before  he  got 
around,  that  chap  had  to  be  It  with  him,  and  so 
on  till  everybody  was  caught.  Then  the  first  one 
tagged  had  to  be  It  for  a  new  start. " 

"I  remember  that  game,"  said  I.  "I  remem 
ber  how  Frank  White,  who  could  skate  like  a 
fiend,  used  to  be  the  last  one  caught.  Sometimes 
he'd  get  around  a  hundred  boys,  ducking  and 
dodging  and  taking  half  a  mile  of  ice  to  do  it, 
but  escaping  untouched.  Sometimes,  if  there 
weren't  many  playing,  he'd  go  around  backwards, 
just  to  taunt  us.  But  I  don't  think  that  game 
was  relievo.  That  doesn't  sound  like  the  name 
to  me." 

"What  was  it,  then?"  said  Old  Hundred. 

"I  don't  know,"  I  answered.  "It's  funny  how 
you  forget  things." 

By  this  time  we  were  strolling  along  the  road 
again.  "Speaking  of  Birch  Meadow,"  said  Old 
Hundred,  "what  glorious  skating  we  kids  used 
to  have  there!  I  never  go  by  Central  Park  in 
winter  without  pitying  the  poor  New  York  young 
sters,  just  hobbling  round  and  round  on  a  half- 
acre  pond  where  the  surface  is  cut  up  into  pow 
der  an  inch  thick,  and  the  crowd  is  so  dense 
you  can  scarcely  see  the  ice.  Shall  you  ever 
forget  that  mile-long  pond  in  the  woods,  not 


<J£umblety-p€g  and  ^Middle  ^4ge         2 1 3 

deep  enough  to  drown  in  anywhere,  and  frozen 
over  with  smooth  black  ice  as  early  as  Thanks 
giving  Day?  How  we  used  to  rush  to  it,  up  Love 
Lane,  as  soon  as  school  was  out!" 

"Do  you  remember,"  said  I,  "how  we  passed 
it  last  year,  and  found  the  woods  all  cut  and  the 
water  drained  off?" 

"Don't  be  a  wet  blanket,"  said  Old  Hundred, 
crossly.  "The  country  has  to  grow." 

I  looked  at  him  out  of  the  corner  of  my  eye. 
The  mood  of  memory  was  on  him.  I  repented 
of  my  speech.  "Yes,"  I  answered.  "No  doubt 
the  country  has  to  grow.  The  colleges  now  play 
hockey  on  ponds  made  by  the  fire  department. 
But  there  isn't  that  thrilling  ring  to  your  runners 
nor  that  long-drawn  echo  from  the  wooded 
shores  when  a  crack  crosses  the  ice." 

"I  can  see  it  all  this  minute,"  said  Old  Hun 
dred.  "I  can  see  my  little  self  like  a  different 
person  [which,  indeed,  he  was!]  as  one  of  the 
crowd.  We  had  chosen  up  sides — ten,  twenty, 
thirty  on  a  side.  Stones,  dragged  from  the  shores, 
were  put  down  for  goals.  Most  of  us  had  hockey 
sticks  we  had  cut  ourselves  in  the  woods,  hickory, 
with  a  bit  of  the  curved  root  for  the  blade.  You 
were  one  of  the  few  boys  who  could  afford  a 
store  stick.  We  had  a  hard  rubber  ball.  Bob 
bie  Pratt  was  always  one  goal  because  he  had 
big  feet.  And  over  the  black  ice,  against  the 
sombre  background  of  those  cathedral  aisles  of 


214         <3&umblety-peg  an 

white  pine,  we  chased  that  ball,  charging  in  solid 
ranks  so  that  the  ice  sagged  and  protested  under 
the  rush  of  our  runners,  wheeling  suddenly,  dart 
ing  in  pursuit  of  one  boy  who  had  snaked  the 
ball  out  from  the  maze  of  feet  and  was  flying  with 
it  toward  the  goal,  all  rapid  a&ion,  panting 
breath,  superb  life.  It  really  must  have  been  a 
beautiful  sight,  one  of  those  hockey  games.  I 
can  still  hear  the  ring  and  roar  of  the  runners 
as  the  crowd  swept  down  in  a  charge!" 

I  smiled.  "And  I  can  still  feel  the  ice  when 
somebody's  stick  got  caught  between  my  legs. 
'Hi,  fellers,  come  look  at  the  star  Willie  made!' 
I  can  hear  you  shouting,  as  you  examined  the  spot 
where  my  anatomy  had  been  violently  super 
imposed  on  the  skating  surface." 

Old  Hundred  smiled  too.  "Fine  little  animals 
we  were!"  he  said.  "I  suppose  one  reason  why 
we  don't  see  more  games  nowdays  is  because  we 
live  in  the  city.  Even  this  suburbanized  region 
is  really  city,  dirtied  all  over  with  its  spawn. 
Lord,  Bill,  think  if  we'd  been  cramped  up  in  an 
East  Side  street,  or  reduced  to  Central  Park  for 
a  skating  pond!  A  precious  lot  of  reminiscences 
we'd  have  to-day,  wouldn't  we?  They  build  the 
kids  what  they  call  public  play-grounds,  and 
then  they  have  to  hire  teachers  to  teach  'em 
how  to  play.  Poor  beggars,  think  of  having  to 
be  taught  by  a  grown-up  how  to  play  a  game! 
They  all  have  a  rudimentary  idea  of  base-ball; 


*%Cumblety-peg  and  <3&iddle  tAge          215 

the  American  spirit  and  the  sporting  extras  see 
to  that.  But  I  never  see  'em  playing  anything 
else  much,  not  even  out  here  where  the  suburbs 
smut  an  otherwise  attractive  landscape." 

"Perhaps,"  I  ventured,  "not  only  the  lack  of 
space  and  free  open  in  the  city  has  something 
to  do  with  it,  but  the  fa6t  that  the  seasons  there 
grow  and  change  so  unperceived.  Games,  you 
remember,  go  by  a  kind  of  immutable  rotation — 
as  much  a  law  of  childhood  as  gravitation  of  the 
universe.  Marbles  belong  to  spring,  to  the  first 
weeks  after  the  frost  is  out  of  the  ground.  They 
are  a  kind  of  celebration  of  the  season,  of  the 
return  to  bare  earth.  Tops  belong  to  autumn, 
hockey  to  the  ice,  base-ball  to  the  spring  and 
summer,  foot-ball  to  the  cold,  snappy  fall,  and 
I  seem  to  remember  that  even  such  games  as 
hide-and-seek  or  puss-in-the-corner  were  played 
constantly  at  one  period,  not  at  all  at  another. 
If  you  played  'em  out  of  time,  they  didn't  seem 
right;  there  was  no  zest  to  them.  Now,  most 
of  these  game  periods  were  determined  long  ago 
by  physical  conditions  of  ground  and  climate. 
They  stem  us  back  to  nature.  Cramp  the  young 
sters  in  the  artificial  life  of  a  city,  and  you  snap 
this  stem.  My  theory  may  be  wild,  all  wrong. 
Yet  I  can't  help  feeling  that  our  games,  which 
we  accepted  and  absorbed  as  a  part  of  the  uni 
verse,  as  much  as  our  parents  or  the  woods  and 
fields,  were  a  part  of  that  nature  which  sur- 


2 1 6         *y£umbltty-peg 

rounded  us,  linking  us  with  the  beginnings  of 
the  race.  Most  kids'  games  are  centuries  upon 
centuries  old,  they  say.  I  can't  help  believing 
that  for  every  sky-scraper  we  erecl:  we  end  the 
life,  for  thousands  of  children,  of  one  more  game." 

Old  Hundred  had  listened  attentively  to  my 
long  discourse,  nodding  his  head  approvingly. 
"No  doubt,  no  doubt/'  he  said.  "I  shall  here 
after  regard  the  Metropolitan  Tower  as  a  me 
morial  shaft,  which  ought  to  bear  an  inscrip 
tion,  'Hie  jacet,  Puss-in-the-corner.'  Yet  I  saw 
some  poor  little  duffers  on  the  East  Side  the 
other  day  trying  to  play  soak  with  a  tattered  old 
ball,  which  kept  getting  lost  under  the  push 
carts." 

"They  die  hard,"  said  I. 

We  had  by  this  time  come  on  our  walk  into 
a  group  of  houses,  the  outskirts  of  a  town. 
Several  small  boys  were,  apparently,  aimlessly 
walking  about. 

"Why  don't  they  do  something,"  Old  Hun 
dred  exclaimed,  half  to  himself.  "Don't  they 
know  how,  even  out  here?" 

"Suppose  you  teach  'em,"  I  suggested. 

Again  Old  Hundred  grinned.  He  walked  over 
among  the  small  boys,  who  stopped  their  talk 
and  regarded  him  silently.  "  Ever  play  duck-on- 
the-rock?"  he  asked,  with  that  curiously  embar 
rassed  friendliness  of  the  middle-aged  man  trying 
to  make  up  to  boyhood.  After  a  certain  period, 


tMumblety-peg  and  ^Middle  *Age          2 1 7 

most  of  us  unconsciously  regard  a  small  boy  as  a 
kind  of  buzz-saw,  to  be  handled  with  extreme 
care. 

The  boys  looked  at  one  another,  as  if  picking 
a  spokesman.  Finally  one  of  them,  a  freckle- 
faced,  stocky  youngster  who  looked  more  like  a 
country  lad  than  the  rest,  replied.  "They  dunno 
how,"  he  said.  "They're  afraid  the  stones'll  hurt 
'em.  We  used  to  play  it  up  State  all  the  time." 

"There's  your  theory,"  said  Old  Hundred  in 
an  aside  to  me. 

"You're  a  liar,"  said  one  of  the  other  boys. 
"We  ain't  afraid,  are  we  Bill?" 

"Naw,"  said  Bill. 

"Who's  a  liar?"  said  the  first  speaker,  doubling 
his  fists.  "  I'll  knock  your  block  off  in  about  a 
minute." 

"Ah,  come  on  an'  do  it,  Rube!"  taunted  the 
other. 

Old  Hundred  hereupon  interfered.  "Let's  not 
fight,  let's  play,"  he  said.  "If  they  don't  know 
how,  we'll  teach  'em,  eh  Rube?  Want  to  learn, 
boys?" 

They  looked  at  him  for  a  moment  with  the 
instinctive  suspicion  of  their  class,  decided  in 
his  favor,  and  assented.  Like  all  men,  Old  Hun 
dred  was  flattered  by  this  mark  of  confidence 
from  the  severest  critics  in  the  world.  He  and 
Rube  hunted  out  a  large  rock,  and  placed  it  on 
the  curb.  Each  boy  found  his  individual  duck, 


2 1 8          <^fumblety-peg  and  ^fiddle 

Old  Hundred  tried  to  count  out  for  It,  couldn't 
remember  the  rhyme,  and  had  to  turn  the  job 
over  to  Rube,  who  delivered  himself  of  the  fol 
lowing: 

"As  I  went  up  to  Salt  Lake 
I  met  a  little  rattlesnake, 
He'd  e't  so  much  of  jelly  cake, 
It  made  his  little  belly  ache." 

When  It  was  thus  sele&ed,  automatically  and 
poetically,  Old  Hundred  drew  a  line  in  the  road, 
parallel  to  the  curb,  It  put  his  duck  on  the 
rock,  and  the  rest  started  to  pitch.  Suddenly  one 
demon  spotted  me,  a  smiling  by-stander.  "Hi," 
he  called,  "Old  Coattails  ain't  playin'." 

"Quitter,  quitter,  quitter!"  taunted  Old  Hun 
dred. 

I  started  to  make  some  remark  about  the  self- 
consciousness  of  a  learned  litterateur  of  forty-five, 
but  my  speech  was  drowned  in  a  derisive  howl 
from  the  buzz-saws.  I  meekly  accepted  the  in 
evitable,  and  hunted  myself  out  a  duck. 

After  ten  minutes  of  madly  dashing  back  to 
the  line  pursued  by  those  supernaturally  active 
young  cubs,  after  stooping  again  and  again  to 
pick  up  my  duck,  after  dodging  flying  stones  and 
sometimes  not  succeeding,  I  was  quite  ready  to 
quit.  Old  Hundred,  flushed  and  perspiring,  was 
playing  as  if  his  life  depended  on  it.  When  he 
was  tagged,  he  took  his  turn  as  It  without  a 


and  <3fCiddle  *Age          219 


murmur.  He  was  one  of  the  kids,  and  they 
knew  it.  But  finally  he,  too,  felt  the  pace  in 
his  bones.  We  left  the  boys  still  playing,  quite 
careless  of  whether  we  went  or  stayed.  We  were 
dusty  and  hot;  our  hands  were  scratched  and 
grimed.  "  Ah  !  "  said  Old  Hundred,  looking  back, 
"I've  accomplished  something  to-day  and  had  a 
good  time  doing  it!  The  ungrateful  little  sav 
ages;  they  might  have  said  good-bye." 

"Yet  you  wouldn't  pull  up  the  mumblety-peg 
for  me,"  I  said. 

"My  dear  fellow,"  he  replied,  "that  is  quite 
different.  To  take  a  dare  from  a  man  is  childish. 
Not  to  take  a  dare  from  a  child  is  unmanly." 

"You  talk  like  G.  K.  Chesterton,"  said  I. 

"Which  shows  that  occasionally  Chesterton 
is  right,"  said  he.  "Speaking  of  dares,  I'd  like 
to  see  a  gang  of  kids  playing  dares  or  follow- 
your-leader  right  now.  Remember  how  we  used 
to  play  follow-your-leader  by  the  hour?  You 
had  to  do  just  what  he  did,  like  a  row  of  sheep. 
When  there  were  girls  in  the  game,  you  always 
ended  up  by  turning  a  somersault,  which  was  a 
subtle  jest  never  to  be  too  much  enjoyed." 

"And  Alice  Perkins  used  to  take  that  dare, 
too,  I  remember,"  said  I. 

"Alice  never  could  bear  to  be  stumped,"  he 
mused.  "She's  either  become  a  mighty  fine 
woman  or  a  bad  one.  She  was  the  only  girl 
we  ever  allowed  to  perform  in  the  circuses  up 


22O          ^hCumblet-e    and  <3xCiddle 


in  your  backyard.  Often  we  wouldn't  even  ad 
mit  girls  as  spectators.  Remember  the  sign  you 
painted  to  that  effect?  She  was  the  lady  trapeze 
artist  and  bareback  rider.  You  were  the  bare 
back,  as  I  recall  it  —  or  was  it  Fatty  Newell? 
Anyhow,  one  of  her  stunts  was  to  hang  by  her 
legs  and  drink  a  tumbler  of  water." 

I   felt   my  muscles.    "I  wonder,"  said   I,  "if 
I  could  still  skin  the  cat?" 

"I'll  bet  I  can  chin  myself  ten  times,"  said 
Old  Hundred. 

We  cast  about  for  a  convenient  limb.  There 
was  an  apple-tree  beside  the  road,  with  a  hori 
zontal  limb  some  eight  feet  above  the  ground. 
I  tried  first.  I  got  myself  over  all  right,  till  I 
hung  inverted,  my  fountain-pen,  pencil,  and  eye 
glass  case  falling  out  of  my  pocket.  But  there 
I  stuck.  There  was  no  strength  in  my  arms  to 
pull  me  up.  So  I  curled  clean  over  and  dropped 
to  the  ground,  very  red  in  the  face,  my  clothes 
covered  with  the  powdered  apple-tree  bark.  Old 
Hundred  grasped  the  limb  to  chin  himself.  He 
got  up  once  easily,  he  got  up  a  second  time  with  dif 
ficulty,  he  got  up  a  third  time  by  an  heroic  effort, 
the  veins  standing  out  on  his  forehead.  The  fourth 
time  he  stuck  two  inches  off  the  ground. 

"'You  are  old,  Father  William/"  I  quoted. 

He  rubbed  his  biceps  sadly.  "I'm  out  of  prac 
tice!"  he  said  with  some  asperity.  But  we  tried 
no  more  stunts  on  the  apple-tree. 


221 


Beyond  the  orchard  was  a  piece  of  split-rail 
fence,  gray  and  old,  with  brambles  growing  at 
the  intersections  —  one  of  the  relics  of  an  elder 
day  in  Westchester  County.  Old  Hundred  looked 
at  it  as  he  put  on  his  coat. 

"  There  ought  to  be  a  bumblebees'  nest  in  that 
fence,"  he  said.  "If  we  should  poke  the  bees 
out  we'd  find  honey,  nice  gritty  honey,  all  over 
rotted  wood  from  our  fingers." 

"Are  you  looking  for  trouble?"  I  asked. 
"However,  if  you  hold  your  breath,  a  bee  can't 
sting  you." 

"I  recall  that  ancient  superstition  —  with  pain," 
he  smiled.  "Why  does  a  bee  have  such  a  fasci 
nation  for  a  boy?  Is  it  because  he  makes  honey?" 

"Not  at  all;  that's  a  secondary  issue.  It's  be 
cause  he's  a  bee,"  I  answered.  "Don't  you  re 
member  the  fun  of  stoning  those  gray  hornets' 
nests  which  used  to  be  built  under  the  school- 
house  eaves  in  summer?  We  waited  till  the  first 
recess  to  plug  a  stone  through  'em,  and  nobody 
could  get  back  in  the  door  without  being  stung. 
It  was  against  the  unwritten  law  to  stone  the 
school-house  nests  in  vacation  time!" 

"Recess!"  mused  Old  Hundred.  "Do  you 
know,  sometimes  in  court  when  the  judge  an 
nounces  a  recess  (which  he  pronounces  with  the 
accent  on  the  second  syllable,  a  manifest  error), 
those  old  school-days  come  back  to  me,  and  my 
case  drops  clean  out  of  my  head  for  the  moment." 


222         *%Cumbkty-peg 

"I  should  think  that  would  be  embarrassing," 
said  I. 

"It  isn't,"  he  said,  "it's  restful.  Besides,  it 
often  restores  my  mislaid  sense  of  humor.  I 
picture  the  judge  out  in  a  school-yard  playing 
leap-frog  with  the  learned  counsel  for  the  prose 
cution  and  the  foreman  of  the  jury.  It  makes 
'em  more  human  to  see  'em  so." 

"A  Gilbertian  idea,  to  say  the  least,"  I  smiled. 
"Why  not  set  the  whole  court  to  playing  squat- 
tag?"' 

"There  was  step-tag,  too,"  said  Old  Hundred. 
"Remember  that?  The  boy  or  girl  who  was  It 
shut  his  eyes  and  counted  ten.  Then  he  opened 
his  eyes  suddenly,  and  if  he  saw  any  part  of  you 
moving  you  became  It.  On  'ten'  you  tried  to 
freeze  into  stiffness.  We  must  have  struck  some 
funny  attitudes." 

"Attitudes,"  said  I,  "that  was  another  game. 
Somebody  said  'fear'  or  'cat'  or  'geography,'  and 
you  had  to  assume  an  attitude  expressive  of  the 
word.  The  girls  liked  that  game." 

"Oh,  the  girls  always  liked  games  where  they 
could  show  off  or  get  personal  attention,"  replied 
Old  Hundred.  "They  liked  hide-and-seek  be 
cause  you  came  after  them,  or  because  you  took 
one  of  'em  and  went  off  with  her  alone  to  hide 
behind  the  wood-shed.  They  liked  kissing  games 
best,  though — drop -the -handkerchief  and  post- 
office." 


223 

"Those  weren't  recess  games,"  I  amended. 
"Those  were  party  games.  You  played  them 
when  you  had  your  best  clothes  on,  which 
entirely  changed  your  mental  attitude,  anyhow. 
When  a  girl  dropped  the  handkerchief  behind 
you,  you  had  to  chase  her  and  kiss  her  if  you 
could,  and  when  you  got  a  letter  in  post-office 
you  had  to  go  into  the  next  room  and  be 
kissed.  Everybody  tittered  at  you  when  you 
came  back." 

"Well,  soak  and  scrub  were  recess  games,  any 
how.  I  can  hear  that  glad  yell,  'Scrub  one!' 
rising  from  the  first  boy  who  burst  out  of  the 
school-house  door.  Then  there  were  dare-base, 
and  foot-ball,  which  we  used  to  play  with  an 
old  bladder,  or  at  best  a  round,  black  rubber  ball, 
not  one  of  these  modern  leather  lemons.  We 
used  to  kick  it,  too.  I  don't  remember  tackling 
and  rushing,  till  we  got  older  and  went  to  prep 
school — or  you  and  I  went  to  prep  school." 

"I'd  hate  to  have  been  tackled  on  the  old 
school  playground,"  said  I.  "It  was  hard  as 
rocks." 

"It  was  rocks,"  said  Old  Hundred.  "You 
could  spin  a  top  on  it  anywhere." 

"Could  you  spin  a  top  now?"  I  asked. 

"Sure!"  said  Old  Hundred.  "And  pop  at  a 
snapper,  too." 

"It's  wicked  to  play  marbles  for  keeps,"  said 
I  impressively.  "Only  the  bad  boys  do  that." 


224          <3xCumblety-peg 

''Poor  mother!"  said  Old  Hundred.  "Re 
member  the  marble  rakes  we  used  to  make?  We 
cut  a  series  of  little  arches  in  a  board,  numbered 
'em  one,  two,  three,  and  so  on,  and  stood  the 
board  up  across  the  concrete  sidewalk  down  by 
Lyceum  Hall.  The  other  kids  rolled  their  mar 
bles  from  the  curb.  If  a  marble  went  through 
an  arch,  the  owner  of  the  rake  had  to  give  the 
boy  as  many  marbles  as  the  number  over  the 
arch.  If  the  boy  missed,  the  owner  took  his 
marble.  It  was  very  profitable  for  the  owner. 
And  my  mother  found  out  I  had  a  rake.  That 
night  it  went  into  the  kitchen  fire,  while  I 
was  lectured  on  the  awful  consequences  of  gam 
bling.5' 

"I  know,"  said  I.  "It  was  almost  as  terrible 
as  sending  'comic  valentines/  Remember  the 
'comics'?  They  were  horribly  colored  litho 
graphs  of  teachers,  old  maids,  dudes,  and  the 
like,  with  equally  horrible  verses  under  them. 
They  cost  a  penny  apiece,  and  you  bought  'em 
at  Damon's  drug  store.  They  were  so  wicked 
that  Emily  Ruggles  wouldn't  sell  'em." 

"  Emily  Ruggles's!"  exclaimed  Old  Hundred. 
"Shall  you  ever  forget  Emily  Ruggles's?  It  was 
in  Lyceum  Hall  building,  a  little  dark  store  up 
a  flight  of  steps — a  notion  store,  I  guess  they 
called  it.  To  us  kids  it  was  just  Emily  Ruggles's. 
It  was  full  of  marbles,  tops,  'scholars'  compan 
ions,'  air-guns,  sheets  of  paper  soldiers,  valentines, 


*3&umblety-peg  and  Middle  *Age          225 

fire-crackers  before  the  Fourth,  elastic  for  sling 
shots,  spools,  needles  and  yards  of  blue  calico 
with  white  dots,  which  hung  over  strings  above 
the  counters.  Emily  was  a  dark,  heavy-browed 
spinster  with  a  booming  bass  voice  and  a  stern 
manner,  and  when  you  crept,  awed  and  timid, 
into  the  store  she  glared  at  you  and  boomed  out, 
*  Which  side,  young  man?'  Yet  her  store  was  a 
kid's  paradise.  I  have  often  wondered  since 
whether  she  didn't,  in  her  heart,  really  love  us 
youngsters,  for  all  her  forbidding  manner." 

"Of  course  she  loved  us,"  said  I.  "She  loved 
her  country,  too.  Don't  you  remember  the  story 
of  how  she  paid  for  a  substitute  in  the  Civil  War, 
because  she  couldn't  go  to  the  front  and  fight 
herself?  Poor  woman,  she  took  the  only  way  she 
knew  to  show  her  affection  for  us.  She  stocked 
her  little  shop  with  a  deledtable  array  which 
kept  a  procession  of  children  pushing  open  the 
door  and  timidly  yet  joyfully  entering  its  dark 
recesses,  where  bags  of  marbles  and  bundles  of 
pencils  gleamed  beneath  the  canopies  of  calico. 
Nowadays  I  never  see  such  shops  anymore.  I 
don't  know  whether  there  are  any  tops  and  mar 
bles  on  the  market.  One  never  sees  them.  Cer 
tainly  one  never  sees  nice  little  shops  devoted 
to  their  sale.  Children  are  not  important  any 
longer." 

Old  Hundred  sighed.  We  walked  on  in  si 
lence,  toward  the  brow  of  a  hill,  and  presently 

16 


226         *J£umblety-peg  and  Middle 

the  Hudson  gleamed  below  us,  while  across  its 
misty  expanse  the  hills  of  New  Jersey  huddled 
into  the  sinking  sun.  Old  Hundred  sat  down  on 
a  stone. 

"I'm  weary,"  he  said,  "and  my  muscles  ache, 
and  I'm  stiff  and  sore  and  forty-five.  Bill,  you're 
getting  bald.  Wipe  your  shiny  high-brow.  You 
look  ridiculous." 

"Shut  up,"  said  I,  "and  don't  get  maudlin 
just  because  you  can't  chin  yourself  ten  times. 
Remember,  it's  because  you're  out  of  practice!" 

"Out  of  practice,  out  of  practice!"  he  said 
viciously.  "A  year  at  Muldoon's  wouldn't  bring 
me  back  the  thoughtless  joy  of  a  hockey  game, 
would  it?  No,  nor  the  delight  of  playing  puss- 
in-the-corner,  or  following  a  paper  trail  through 
the  October  woods,  or  yelling  'Daddy  on  the 
castle,  Daddy  on  the  castle!'  while  we  jumped 
on  Frank  Swain's  veranda  and  off  again  into  his 
mother's  flower-bed!" 

"I  trust  not,"  said  I.  "Just  what  are  you  get 
ting  at?" 

"This,"  answered  Old  Hundred:  "that  I,  you, 
none  of  us,  go  into  things  now  for  the  sheer  ex 
uberance  of  our  bodies  and  the  sheer  delight  of 
playing  a  game.  We  must  have  some  ulterior 
motive — usually  a  sordid  one,  getting  money  or 
downing  the  other  fellow;  and  most  of  the  time 
we  have  to  drive  our  poor,  old  rackety  bodies 
with  a  whip.  About  the  time  a  man  begins  to 


*%Mmblety-peg  and  ^Middle  *Age          227 

vote,  he  begins  to  disintegrate.  The  rest  of  life 
is  gradual  running  down,  or  breaking  up.  The 
Hindoos  were  right/' 

"Old  Hundred/'  said  I,  "you  are  something 
of  an  idiot.  Those  games  of  ours  were  nature's 
school;  nature  takes  that  way  to  teach  us  how  to 
behave  ourselves  socially,  how  to  conquer  others, 
but  mostly  how  to  conquer  ourselves.  We  were 
men-pups,  that's  all.  For  Heaven's  sake,  can't 
you  have  a  pleasant  afternoon  thinking  of  your 
boyhood  without  becoming  maudlin?" 

"You  talk  like  a  book  by  G.  Stanley  Hall," 
retorted  Old  Hundred.  "No  doubt  our  games 
were  nature's  way  of  teaching  us  how  to  be  men, 
but  that  doesn't  alter  the  fadl  that  the  process  of 
being  taught  was  better  than  the  process  of  put 
ting  the  knowledge  into  practice.  I  hate  these 
folks  who  rhapsodize  sentimentally  over  children 
as  ' potential  little  men.'  Potential  fiddle-sticks! 
Their  charm  is  because  they  airit  men  yet,  be 
cause  they  are  still  trailing  clouds  of  glory,  be 
cause  they  are  nice,  mysterious,  imaginative, 
sensitive,  nasty  little  beasts.  You!  All  you  are 
thinking  of  is  that  dinner  I  owe  you !  Well, 
come  on,  then,  we'll  go  back  into  that  monstrous 
heap  of  mortar  down  there  to  the  south,  where 
there  are  no  children  who  know  how  to  play, 
no  tops,  no  marbles,  no  woods  and  ponds  and 
bees'  nests  in  the  fences,  no  Emily  Ruggleses; 
where  every  building  is,  as  you  say,  the  grave- 


228          *%Cumblety-peg  and  twiddle 

stone  of  a  game,  and  the  only  sport  left  is  the 
playing  of  the  market  for  keeps !" 

He  got  up  painfully.  I  got  up  painfully.  We 
both  limped.  Down  the  hill  in  silence  we  went. 
On  the  train  Old  Hundred  lighted  a  cigar.  "What 
do  you  say  to  the  club  for  dinner?"  he  asked.  "I 
ought  to  go  across  to  the  Bar  Association  after 
ward  and  look  up  some  cases  on  that  rebate  suit. 
By  Jove,  but  it's  going  to  be  a  pretty  trial!" 

"That  pleases  me  all  right,"  I  answered.  "  I've 
got  to  meet  Ainsley  after  the  theatre  and  go 
over  our  new  third  aft.  I  think  you  are  going 
to  like  it  better  than  the  old." 

At  the  next  station  Old  Hundred  went  out 
on  the  platform  and  hailed  a  newsboy.  "I  want 
to  see  how  the  market  closed,"  he  explained, 
as  he  buried  himself  in  his  paper. 


^Barber  Shops  of  Yesterday 

I  HAVE  just  been  to  a  barber  shop, — not  a  city 
barber  shop,  where  you  exped:  tiled  floors  and 
polished  mirrors  and  a  haughty  Venus  by  a  table 
in  the  corner,  who  glances  scornfully  at  your 
hands  as  you  give  your  hat,  coat,  and  collar  to 
a  boy,  as  much  as  to  say,  "Manicures  himself!" 
— but  a  country  barber  shop,  in  a  New  England 
small  town.  I  rather  expe&ed  that  the  experience 
would  repay  me,  in  awakened  pleasant  memories, 
for  a  very  poor  hair-cut.  Instead,  I  got  a  very 
good  hair-cut,  and  no  pleasant  memories  were 
awakened  at  all;  not,  that  is,  by  the  dired:  pro 
cess  of  suggestion.  I  was  only  led  to  muse  on 
barber  shops  of  my  boyhood  because  this  one 
was  so  different.  Even  the  barber  was  different. 
He  chewed  gum,  he  worked  quickly,  he  used 
shaving  powder  and  took  his  cloths  from  a  ster 
ilizer,  and  finally  he  held  a  hand-glass  behind 
my  head  for  me  to  see  the  result,  quite  like  his 
city  cousins.  (By  the  way,  was  ever  a  man  so 
brave  as  to  say  the  cut  <wasrit  all  right,  when  the 
barber  held  that  hand-glass  behind  his  head?  And 


230  barber  Shops  of  Tester  day 

what  would  the  barber  say  if  he  did?)  No,  this 
shop  was  antiseptic,  and  uninteresting.  There 
was  not  even  a  picture  on  the  walls ! 

But,  to  the  barber's  soothing  snip,  snip,  snip, 
and  the  gentle  tug  of  the  comb,  I  dreamed  of 
the  barber  shops  of  my  boyhood,  and  of  Clarkie 
Parker's  in  particular.  Clarkie's  shop  was  in  Ly 
ceum  Hall  block,  one  flight  up — a  huge  room, 
with  a  single  green  upholstered  barber's  chair  be 
tween  the  windows,  where  one  could  sit  and  watch 
the  town  go  by  below  you.  The  room  smelled 
pungently  of  bay  rum.  Barber  shops  don't  smell 
of  bay  rum  any  more.  Around  two  sides  were 
ranged  many  chairs  and  an  old  leather  couch. 
The  chair-arms  were  smooth  and  black  with  the 
rubbing  of  innumerable  hands  and  elbows,  and 
behind  them,  making  a  dark  line  along  the  wall, 
were  the  marks  where  the  heads  of  the  sitters 
rubbed  as  they  tilted  back.  Nor  can  I  forget  the 
spittoons, — large  shallow  boxes,  two  feet  square, 
— four  of  them,  full  of  sand.  On  a  third  side  of 
the  room  stood  the  basin  and  water-taps,  and 
beside  them  a  large  black-walnut  cabinet,  full 
of  shelves.  The  shelves  were  full  of  mugs,  and 
on  every  mug  was  a  name,  in  gilt  letters,  gen 
erally  Old  English.  Those  mugs  were  a  town 
directory  of  our  leading  citizens.  My  father's 
mug  was  on  the  next  to  the  top  shelf,  third 


barber  Shops  of  Tester  day  231 

from  the  end  on  the  right.  The  sight  of  it  used 
to  thrill  me,  and  at  twelve  I  began  surreptitiously 
to  feel  my  chin,  to  see  if  there  were  any  hope 
of  my  achieving  a  mug  in  the  not -too -distant 
future. 

Above  the  chairs,  the  basin,  the  cabinet,  hung 
pictures.  Several  of  those  pictures  I  have  never 
seen  since,  but  the  other  day  in  New  York  I 
came  upon  one  of  them  in  a  print-shop  on  Fourth 
Avenue,  and  was  restrained  from  buying  it  only 
by  the,  to  me,  prohibitive  price.  Fve  been  ashamed 
ever  since,  too,  that  I  allowed  it  to  be  prohibi 
tive.  I  feel  traitorous  to  a  memory.  It  was  a  lu 
rid  lithograph  of  a  burning  building  upon  which 
brave  firemen  in  red  shirts  were  pouring  copious 
streams  of  water,  while  other  brave  firemen 
worked  the  pump-handles  of  the  engine.  The 
flames  were  leaping  out  in  orange  tongues  from 
every  window  of  the  doomed  structure  (which 
was  a  fine  business  block  three  stories  high),  but 
you  felt  sure  that  the  heroes  would  save  all  ad 
joining  property,  in  spite  of  the  evident  high  wind. 
Another  picture  in  Clarkie's  shop  showed  these 
same  firemen  (at  least,  they,  too,  wore  red  shirts) 
hauling  their  engine  out  of  its  abode;  and  still 
another  displayed  them  hauling  it  back  again. 
On  this  latter  occasion  it  was  coated  with  ice, 
and  I  used  to  wonder  if  all  these  pictures  depicted 


232  ^Barber  Shops  of  Tester  day 

the  same  fire,  because  the  trees  were  in  full  leaf 
in  the  others.  There  also  hung  on  the  walls  a 
truly  suberb  engraving  of  the  loss  of  the  Ardlic. 
Her  bow  (or  was  it  her  stern?)  was  high  in  air, 
and  figures  were  dropping  off  it  into  the  sea, 
like  nuts  from  a  shaken  hickory.  This  was  a 
very  terrible  pidture,  and  one  turned  with  relief 
to  Maude  S.  standing  before  a  bright  green  hedge 
and  looking  every  inch  a  gentle  champion,  or 
the  stuffed  pickerel,  twenty-four  inches  long, 
framed  under  glass,  with  his  weight — a  ponder 
ous  figure — printed  on  the  frame. 

Clarkie  Parker  was  in  reality  a  barber  by  avo 
cation.  The  art  he  loved  was  angling.  Patience 
with  a  rod  and  line,  the  slow  contemplation  of 
rivers,  was  in  his  blood,  and  in  his  fingers.  It 
took  him  a  long  time  to  cut  your  hair,  even 
when,  on  the  first  hot  day  of  June,  you  bade 
him,  "take  it  all  off  with  the  lawn-mower."  (Do 
any  boys  have  their  heads  clean-clipped  in  sum 
mer  any  more?)  But  while  he  cut,  he  talked 
of  fishing.  You  listened  as  to  one  having  authority. 
He  knew  every  brook,  every  pool,  every  pond, 
for  miles  around.  You  went  next  day  where 
Clarkie  advised.  And  there  was  no  use  expect 
ing  a  hair-cut  or  a  shave  on  the  first  of  April, 
when  "the  law  went  off  on  trout/'  Clarkie's 
shop  was  shut.  If  the  day  happened  to  be  Satur- 


^Barber  Shops  of  Yesterday  233 

day,  many  a  pious  man  in  our  village  had  to  go 
to  church  upon  the  morrow  unshaven  or  un- 
trimmed. 

I  know  not  what  has  become  now  of  Clarkie 
or  his  shop.  Doubtless  they  have  gone  the  way 
of  so  many  pleasantly  flavored  things  of  our  van 
ished  New  England.  I  only  know  that  I  still 
possess  a  razor  he  sold  me  when  my  downy  face 
had  begun  to  arouse  public  derision.  I  shall  al 
ways  cherish  that  razor,  though  I  never  shave 
with  it.  I  never  could  shave  with  it!  But  I  love 
Clarkie  just  the  same.  He  only  proved  himself 
thereby  the  ultimate  Yankee. 


The  "Button 


you/'  said  I,  "anything  like  the  ones 
left?"  —  and  I  held  out  to  my  wife  a  shirt  just 
back  from  the  laundry,  and  minus  a  strategic 
button. 

"I'll  look  in  my  button  box  and  see,"  she 
answered,  taking  the  shirt. 

Her  button  box!  I  did  not  know  she  had  one, 
and  followed  her  into  her  retreat  to  see  it.  But 
alas!  it  was  a  griveous  disappointment,  being 
nothing  but  a  drawer  set  in  some  sort  of  a  fancy 
contraption  of  chintz-covered  pasteboard,  like  a 
toy  bureau,  which  stood  on  her  work  table.  No 
doubt  it  contained  buttons,  and  was  serviceable. 
But  a  button  box!  To  call  it  that  were  to  libel 
a  noble  institution  of  an  elder  day. 

As  I  waited  for  the  restoration  of  my  shirt 
I  thought  tenderly  of  the  button  box  of  my  child 
hood.  It  was  no  dinky  six-  by  -four-  inch  paste 
board  drawer,  not  two  inches  deep  —  no,  sir!  It 
was  a  cylindrical  wooden  box  of  the  substantial 
and  finished  workmanship  which  went  into  even 
such  humble  things  as  a  butter  box  a  century 
ago,  for  mother  had  inherited  it  from  her  mother. 


The  "Button  "Box  235 

It  must  once  have  contained  ten  pounds  of 
butter,  but  all  traces  of  its  original  service  had 
long  disappeared.  The  drum,  of  very  thin,  tough 
wood,  which  had  kept  its  shape  uncracked,  had 
been  polished  a  dark  nut  brown  by  countless 
hands.  The  bottom  and  cover,  of  pine,  were 
darkened,  too,  but  without  polish.  This  box 
dwelt  on  the  second  shelf  of  the  old  what-not, 
which,  in  turn,  stood  in  the  closet  passage  under 
neath  the  stairs.  When  any  accident  befell  our 
garment  fastenings,  "Go  and  get  the  button 
box/'  mother  said,  as  she  reached  for  her  needle. 
Or,  on  rainy  days,  when  we  grew  more  and 
more  restless  and  all  other  devices  failed,  "You 
may  go  and  get  the  button  box,"  mother  would 
say,  and  we  were  solaced  till  supper  time. 

No  modern  patent  sewing- table  receptacle 
could  possible  hold  one  quarter  of  the  contents 
of  that  button  box,  the  accumulation  of  at  least 
three  generations.  It  was  heavy,  and  having  no 
handles,  you  had  to  grasp  it  with  open  palms  on 
either  side — hence  the  polish.  It  rattled  when 
taken  down  from  its  shelf,  and  the  very  first 
thing  you  did  when  the  lid  was  off  was  to  plunge 
your  two  hands  down  into  the  mass,  and  let  fist- 
fuls  of  buttons  trickle  through  your  fingers. 

Sometimes  we  played  it  was  a  treasure  chest, 
and  these  buttons  were  Spanish  doubloons.  Some 
times  we  trickled  them  just  for  the  cool  feel  of 
it,  the  sound  of  the  rattle,  the  sensation  of  plung- 


236  The  'Button  <Box 

ing  fingers  into  the  oddly  liquid  mass.  There 
were  great  steel  buttons,  little  pearl  bottons, 
white  bone  buttons,  black  suspender  buttons, 
cloth  buttons,  silk  buttons,  crocheted  buttons, 
elongated  crystal  buttons  (which  we  held  to  the 
light  "to  make  prisms"),  lovely  agate  buttons, 
brass  military  buttons  with  the  U.  S.  eagle  upon 
them,  wooden  buttons,  either  once  covered  or 
yet  to  be  covered,  shoe  buttons  (which  invariably 
were  in  practical  demand  and  invariably  had  sunk 
to  the  bottom  of  the  box),  strange  great  buttons 
from  some  long-forgotten  garment  of  grand 
mother's,  familiar  buttons  from  some  newly  re 
membered  garment  of  our  own. 

It  seems  odd,  when  I  think  of  it  now,  the  end 
less  delight  we  children  got  just  from  the  contem 
plation  and  discussion  of  those  buttons.  Some 
times,  of  course,  we  picked  out  the  suitable  ones, 
and  strung  them  in  long  chains.  Sometimes  we 
used  them  for  counters  in  games.  But  often  we 
just  turned  them  over  and  over,  or  tipped  them 
out  on  a  paper  spread  on  the  floor,  and  from  the 
hints  they  gave  us  reconstructed  ancient  garments 
or  recalled  forgotten  clothes  of  our  own. 

" Oh,  that  one  used  to  be  on  my  winter  jacket!' 
"Look,  here's  one  of  papa's  pants  buttons — 
it  says  'Macullar  and  Parker'  on  it!" 
"Hi,  there's  my  old  brown  overcoat!" 
"Oh,  dear,  I  wish  I  still  had  that  pretty  gray 
suit,  with  those  steel  buttons  on  it!" 


The  'Button  ftox  237 

The  silly  talk  of  children — and  how  like  some 
conversations  the  propinquity  of  piazzas  has  since 
forced  me  to  listen  to! 

To  find  just  the  button  she  wanted  was  some 
times  a  long  task  for  mother,  and  father,  it  must 
be  admitted,  had  varied  the  proverbial  needle 
simile  for  our  domestic  establishment,  to  read, 
"like  hunting  for  a  button  in  your  mother's  but 
ton  box."  But  still  the  odd  buttons  continued 
to  go  in,  and  only  the  ones  needed  came  perma 
nently  out.  You  never  could  tell,  to  be  sure, 
when  the  most  unlikely  button  would  come  in 
handy.  Sometimes  there  were  days  when  the 
village  dress-maker  arrived  after  breakfast  and 
remained  till  almost  supper  time,  converting  the 
upstairs  front  chamber  into  a  maze  of  threads 
and  snippings,  and  requisitioning  the  button  box 
in  long  searches  for  "a  set  of  six".  That  was  a 
fine  game!  Sometimes  it  was  easy.  Sometimes 
only  five  could  be  found  of  the  type  she  particu 
larly  desired.  But  never  did  the  box  fail  com 
pletely;  always  there  were  enough  of  some  button 
that,  she  said,  without  dropping  the  pins  from 
her  mouth,  would  do,  "though  it  ain't  quite  what 
I  wanted." 

All  this  flashed  through  my  memory  as  I 
waited  for  my  wife  to  reestablish  connections  on 
my  shirt.  As  she  finally  finished,  and  pushed  in 
her  silly  little  drawer,  I  said: 


238  The  ^Button  'Sox 

"Do  you  call  that  thing  a  button  box?  Why 
don't  you  have  a  real  one?" 

"That's  quite  large  enough  when  you  have 
to  find  a  match,"  said  she,  "and  too  large  when 
you  drop  it." 

Women  are  practical  creatures;  there  is  no 
sentiment  in  them.  Their  alleged  possession  of 
it  is  the  most  spurious  of  all  the  arguments  against 
equal  suffrage. 


Peppermints 

I  HAVE  just  purchased  a  little  bag  of  pepper 
mints,  and  returned  with  them  to  my  rooms 
above  the  Square.  I  did  not  purchase  them  at 
the  promptings  of  a  sweet  tooth,  but  of  a  hungry 
heart.  They  take  me  back  into  the  forgotten 
Aprils  of  my  life,  where  I  often  love  to  loiter, 
not  from  any  resentment  that  I  have  been  un 
able  to  emulate  Peter  Pan  and  remain  a  boy  for 
ever,  but  because  this  great  town  is  drab  and 
dusty  and  imprisoning,  and  it  is  sweet  to  escape 
down  the  green  lanes  of  April,  even  if  only  in 
a  memory.  A  physical  sensation — the  sound  of 
a  voice,  a  hand  patting  us  to  the  rythm  of  "Tell 
Aunt  Rhody",  an  odor — can  plunge  us  deeper 
and  swifter  down  to  the  buried  places  of  our 
memory  than  any  process  of  deliberate  recollec 
tion.  No  robin  sings  against  my  window  of  a 
morning  here — only  the  noisy  sparrows  twitter 
and  quarrel,  reminding  me  of  the  curb  market. 
No  lilac  sheds  its  perfume  on  the  still  air.  I  am 
perforce  reduced  to  peppermints.  The  taste  of 
peppermints  on  my  tongue,  the  pungent  fra 
grance  of  them  in  my  nostrils,  have  the  power, 


240  'Peppermints 

however,  to  transport  me  far  from  this  maze  of 
mortared  canons,  back  across  the  years,  to  a  land 
where  the  robins  sang  against  the  spacious  sky 
and  a  little  boy  dreamed  great  dreams. 

So  now  I  am  sitting  high  up  above  the  Square, 
with  my  little  bag  of  peppermints  before  me 
(somewhat  diminished  in  quantity  already),  and 
think,  between  slow,  sipping  nibbles,  of  that  lit 
tle  boy. 

In  his  day,  in  the  land  where  he  came  from, 
peppermints  were  almost  a  symbol  of  life's  best 
things — of  grandmothers  and  other  dear  old  ladies 
who  kept  cookies  in  cool  stone  crocks  in  sweet- 
smelling  "butt'ries"  (sometimes  foolishly  called 
pantries  by  those  who  put  on  airs);  of  Christ- 
mastides  when  to  the  joy  of  peppermint  sticks 
was  added  the  unspeakable  delight  of  sucking 
barley  toys, — red  dogs,  golden  camels  that  lost 
their  humps  and  elephants  that  lost  their  trunks 
as  the  tongue  went  succulently  'round  and  'round 
them;  of  the  wonderful  village  "notion"  store, 
presided  over  by  a  terrible  female  person  with  a 
deep  bass  voice,  who  asked  you  over  the  counter 
as  you  entered,  "Which  side,  young  man?"  It 
was  bad  enough  to  be  called  "Bubble",  but  to 
be  called  "young  man"  in  this  ironic  bass  was 
almost  insufferable.  Yet  you  bore  it  nobly,  for 
the  sake  of  the  pound  of  shot  for  your  air- 
gun  or  the  blood-alley  or  the  great  pink  and 
white  peppermints,  two  for  a  cent,  that  reposed 


^Peppermints  241 

in  a  glass  jar  on  the  left  side  of  the  shop.  Was 
Miss  Emily  so  terrible  a  person,  I  wonder  now? 
She  was  always  looked  upon  a  little  askance  by 
the  ladies  of  our  village  because  she  was  "so  mas 
culine".  But  if  she  did  not  conceal  a  softness 
for  children  under  her  stern  exterior  why  did 
she  keep  a  stock  of  so  many  things  dear  to  the 
childish  heart,  from  paper  soldiers  (purchased  by 
the  yard)  to  sleds  and  shot?  Perhaps  that  fan 
tastic  stock  of  hers  was  her  curious  expression 
of  the  Eternal  Motherly.  After  she  died,  every 
year  on  the  3oth  of  May  the  "Vet'rans,"  as  they 
marched  two  by  two  in  annually  dwindling  lines 
about  the  cemetery,  placed  a  fresh  print  flag  and  a 
basket  of  geraniums  on  her  grave,  because  she  had 
sent  a  substitute  to  the  War.  To  us  youngsters 
this  substitute  used  to  explain  why  she  kept  shot 
for  sale;  she  was  by  nature  a  bellicose  person,  and, 
we  were  sure,  her  great  grief  was  her  sex. 

In  my  own  family  peppermints  were  directly 
connected,  by  legend,  with  feminine  attractive 
ness.  A  great  grandmother  on  my  mother's  side 
had  been  in  her  day  a  famous  beauty.  And  when 
asked  the  secret  of  her  charm,  as  she  frequently 
was  (to  my  infant  imagination  she  appeared  as 
a  superhumanly  radiant  vision  who  walked  about 
the  streets  in  a  hoop-skirt  with  an  admiring 
throng  in  her  wake,  constantly  being  forced  to 
explain  why  she  was  beautiful),  she  did  not  utter 
testimonials  for  anybody's  soap,  nor  for  a  pat- 
17 


242  'Peppermints 

ent  dietary  system,  nor  even  for  outdoor  exer 
cise.  She  replied  simply,  "Peppermints".  Great 
grandmamma  died  when  my  mother  was 
a  girl,  and  to  mother  fell  the  task  of  going 
through  the  old  lady's  possessions.  She  says  it 
was  a  task;  probably  it  was  a  privilege.  At  any 
rate,  my  mother  records  that  she  found  pepper 
mints  everywhere,  in  every  kind  of  wrapper, 
stowed  in  the  different  receptacles,  in  boxes, 
bags,  trunks,  in  bureau  drawers  and  writing  desks 
and  "secretaries".  They  were  among  letters  and 
laces,  in  the  folds  of  silk  gowns  and  even  the 
table  linen.  Some  of  the  peppermints  had 
crumbled  and  almost  evaporated.  Some  had  "os 
sified",  as  mother  says.  "And,"  she  used  to  add, 
telling  the  tale  to  large-eyed,  hungry-mouthed 
little  me,  "I  have  not  seen  so  many  peppermints 
outside  a  candy  shop  since  that  day." 

"But  did  the  peppermints  really  make  great 
grandmamma  beautiful?"  I  would  ask. 

"She  always  said  so,"  my  mother  would  reply, 
"and  she  was  certainly  very  beautiful." 

"Is  that  why  you  eat  peppermints?"  I  then 
inquired,  on  a  day  when  I  had  detected  her 
with  a  bag  of  the  confeclion. 

At  this  point  there  was  a  masculine  chuckle 
from  the  armchair  by  the  bookcase.  Also,  a 
peppermint  was  promptly  produced  for  my  per 
sonal  consumption.  I  had  a  great  fondness  for 
the  memory  of  my  beautiful  ancestor. 


^Peppermints  243 

Peppermints,  too,  are  intimately  connected 
with  the  religious  experiences  of  my  childhood; 
or,  perhaps  I  should  say,  with  the  religious  ob 
servances  of  my  childhood.  Our  minister's  whisk 
ers  always  interested  me  more  than  his  discourses. 
As  I  nibble  a  peppermint  from  the  bag  before 
me — lingeringly,  for  the  supply  is  being  fast  de 
pleted — and  the  frail  yet  pungent  odor  fills  my 
nostrils,  I  am  once  more  in  that  half-filled  church, 
on  a  Sabbath  morning  in  early  Spring,  dozing 
through  the  sermon,  with  my  head  tumbling 
sleepily  now  and  then  against  my  father's  shoul 
der.  Slowly  the  scene  comes  back,  in  every  least 
detail,  the  smallest  sights  and  sounds  of  that 
morning  all  here,  but  all  thin  and  faint  and  frail, 
spun  of  the  gossamer  web  of  memory.  Can  I 
hold  them  till  they  are  set  down?  I  shall  have  to 
eat  another  precious  white  lozenge  from  my  bag. 

My  cheek  had  bumped  my  father's  shoulder 
again  when  I  caught  a  sudden  whiff  of  peppermint 
drops  and  raised  my  head  just  in  time  to  see  an 
old  lady  across  the  aisle  whisk  her  dress  down 
over  her  petticoat  pocket.  For  a  few  moments 
I  watched  her  in  envy,  for  her  mouth  was  mov 
ing  ever  so  little  and  I  could  fancy  the  delicious 
tarte.  But  how  could  she  enjoy  the  candy  and 
not  make  her  mouth  go  more  than  that,  I  won 
dered.  I  did  not  shut  my  eyes  again,  but  sat 
very  still  against  my  father's  arm  and  let  my 
eyes  wander  around  the  church. 


244  ^Peppermints 

Ours  was  one  of  the  "new"  churches.  The 
beautiful  old  "meeting  house"  at  the  head  of  the 
village  green,  with  its  exquisite  white  spire  and 
its  pillard  pulpit  and  windows  of  "common" 
glass,  purpling  with  age,  was  the  property  of  the 
Methodists — which  in  some  manner  I  could  not 
then  understand  (and  do  not  clearly  yet)  was  al 
ways  a  source  of  resentment  in  our  congregation. 
Our  church  had  stained  windows,  a  chocolate 
brown  field  with  white  stars  in  the  centre  and 
around  the  edges  tiny  squares  of  many  colors,  atro 
cious  reds,  blues  and  yellows.  These  windows  were 
opened  a  little  at  the  top,  and  through  the  openings 
came  soft  sounds  of  Spring,  the  wind  racing  among 
the  budding  branches,  the  sudden  call  of  a  bird, 
and  occasionally  the  crooning,  sleepy  cackle  of 
hens  from  a  distance.  Now  and  then  a  cloud 
drifted  by,  across  the  sun,  dimming  the  interrior 
for  a  moment,  so  that  the  minister's  voice  seemed 
to  come  from  farther  off.  The  sunlight  through 
the  stained  glass  projected  colored  splotches  here 
and  there.  I  wondered  if  the  people  knew  how 
homely  they  looked  with  those  splotches  on 
their  faces,  like  great  birth-marks.  That  suggested 
a  pastime  to  relieve  the  monotony. 

Starting  with  the  choir  (which  consisted  of 
four  people,  boxed  in  before  the  organ  at  the 
right  of  the  pulpit)  I  began  to  count  people 
with  colored  spots.  First  there  was  the  tenor 
with  a  purple  spot  on  his  left  cheek  and  on  his 


Peppermints  245 

sandy  hair  and  beard.  But  the  organist  and  so 
prano  were  splashed  with  scarlet.  Then  I  forget 
to  count,  because  I  noticed  that  the  'alto  had  a 
new  violet  hat,  which  eclipsed  the  soprano's  old 
green  one.  I  wondered  whether  she  had  gone 
to  Boston  to  buy  it,  or  had  "patronized  home 
industries" — a  phrase  I  had  just  discovered  with 
pride  in  our  local  paper.  The  bass  was  nodding 
and  letting  his  hymn  book  slip  toward  a  fall.  I 
hoped  slily  that  it  would  fall,  and  braced  my 
nerves  for  the  crash.  But  he  woke  with  a  funny 
jerk,  like  my  jack-in-the-box,  just  in  time  to 
catch  it,  and  began  listening  intently  to  the  ser 
mon  as  if  he  had  been  awake  all  the  while.  The 
soprano  smiled  at  someone  in  the  congregation, 
whispered  to  the  tenor,  and  then  sat  silent  again. 
My  gaze  wandered  to  the  minister's  pleasant 
face,  with  its  great  square-cut  gray  beard,  which 
always  suggested  to  me — why,  I  don't  know — 
one  of  the  minor  prophets;  and  then  past  him 
to  the  gilded  cross  that  was  painted  on  the  apsi- 
dal  wall  behind  him.  I  knew  that  if  I  looked 
at  this  cross,  with  its  gilded  rays  spreading  out 
in  all  directions,  long  enough  the  rays  would 
begin  to  melt  together  and  then  to  turn  'round 
and  'round  in  a  kind  of  dizzy  dance.  So  I  looked 
steadily,  till  I  had  to  shake  the  sleep  out  of  my 
eyes  with  a  great  effort.  Then  I  fell  to  specu 
lating  on  the  tablets  painted  at  the  left  of  the 
pulpit,  to  balance  the  organ.  These  tablets  were 


246  ^Peppermints 

encased  in  a  design  that  suggested  a  twin  tomb 
stone.  On  one  of  them  were  the  words,  "God 
is  a  spirit,  and  they  that  worship  Him  must 
worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth,"  a  sentence 
which  had  always  given  me  great  difficulty.  But 
this  morning  I  interpreted  it  at  last  to  my  satis 
faction.  It  meant,  I  decided,  that  a  man  must 
first  die  and  become  a  ghost,  a  spirit,  before  he 
could  tell  what  church  he  really  ought  to  go  to. 
I  wondered  if,  in  that  spirit  region,  there  would 
be  any  Methodists. 

Directly  below  the  tablets,  in  a  front  pew,  sat 
Miss  Emily,  she  of  a  bass  voice  and  the  "notion" 
store.  Her  Paisley  shawl  was  folded  tightly 
around  her  broad,  bony  shoulders,  and  made  the 
lower  half  of  a  diamond  down  her  back,  the  pat 
tern  exactly  in  the  middle.  If  the  pattern  had  not 
been  exactly  in  the  middle  I  am  sure  the  service 
would  have  stopped  automatically,  till  it  was  ad 
justed.  She  sat  very  straight  and  looked  with 
partly  turned  head,  showing  her  masculine  pro 
file,  sternly  at  the  minister,  as  if  defying  him  to 
be  unothordox.  I  tried  to  picture  her  asking 
him,  as  he  entered  her  shop,  "Which  side,  old 
man?"  Would  she  dare,  I  wondered?  And  what 
would  he  reply?  A  few  pews  behind  Miss  Emily 
sat  "the  spilled-over  old  lady".  My  sister  had 
first  called  her  the  spilled-over  old  lady,  because 
she  seemed  to  have  been  crowded  out  by  the  six 
old  ladies  in  the  pew  behind,  and  to  have  been 


^Peppermints  247 

permanently  soured  by  the  slight.  Her  hair  was 
done  up  in  a  tight,  emphatic  pug,  her  profile 
suggested  vinegar — or  perhaps  it  was  her  com 
plexion.  At  any  rate,  when  I  looked  at  her  I 
thought  of  vinegar.  I  wondered  if  she  ever  ate 
peppermints,  and  if  they  tasted  the  same  to  her 
as  to  other  people. 

Presently  I  leaned  forward  and  extracted  a 
hymn  book  from  the  rack  attached  to  the  back 
of  the  pew  in  front.  This  rack  contained,  be 
sides  hymn  books,  a  pair  of  old  gloves  done  into 
a  wad  wrong  side  out,  two  fans,  "leaflets"  of  all 
sorts,  and  little  envelopes  for  the  collection.  Most 
of  the  "leaflets"  were  appeals  for  charity,  I  fancy. 
At  any  rate,  many  of  them  were  full  of  pictures 
of  poor  little  city  children  suffering  from  all 
sorts  of  diseases,  and  oppressed  me  horribly.  But 
I  could  always  rely  on  the  hymn  book.  My  first 
consciousness  that  there  is  any  difference  between 
prose  and  poetry  except  in  the  matter  of  rhyme 
came  from  reading  the  hymn  book,  from  Whit- 
tier's, — 

I  know  not  where  His  islands  lift 
Their  fronded  palms  in  air ; 

I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  His  love  and  care. 

I  had  no  idea  what  kind  of  a  palm  a  fronded 
palm  is,  but  I  fancied  it  something  much  grander 
and  taller  than  other  palms;  and  the  whole  hymn 
filled  my  mind  with  a  large,  expansive  imagry, 


248  Peppermints 

breathed  over  my  little  spirit  an  ineffable  serenity. 
This  hymn  I  now  read  while  the  minister  talked 
away  behind  his  minor-prophet  whiskers; — this, 
and  Wesley's, — 

A  charge  to  keep  I  have, 

A  God  to  glorify; 
A  never-dying  soul  to  save, 

And  fit  it  for  the  sky. 

This  stanza  always  made  me  want  to  get  up  and 
shout.  I  read  and  re-read  it,  repeating  it,  with 
noiseless  lips.  The  tune  it  went  to  seemed  inade 
quate,  the  more  so  as  in  our  church  tunes  were 
always  dragged  to  the  limit  of  non-conformist 
dolorousness.  The  stanza  seemed  to  me,  even 
then,  happy,  hopeful,  staccato,  jubilant.  I  won 
der  what  I  should  have  thought  had  I  known 
its  author  was  a  Methodist?  Could  good  come 
out  of  Nazareth,  after  all?  Instead,  I  fell  to  won 
dering  about  the  after  life  in  the  sky.  Heaven 
I  pictured  as  a  city  builded  on  a  cloud.  If,  on 
a  very  clear  day,  the  cloud  should  dry  up  what, 
I  speculated,  would  the  angels  walk  on?  Then 
it  occurred  to  me  that  they  do  not  walk,  they  fly. 
So  they  would  go  flying  about  streets  out  of  which 
the  bottoms  had  dropped,  and  look  right  through 
far  down  to  the  earth,  which  to  their  sight  would 
doubtless  resemble  the  raised  map  of  America  in 
our  school,  that  stood  on  a  table  in  the  corner 
and  always  had  chalk  dust,  like  snow,  in  the  inch- 


'Peppermints  249 

deep  ravines  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  I  won 
dered  if  the  lower  stories  of  the  houses  would 
have  any  floors.  The  cellars  wouldn't,  anyway. 
What  kept  the  furnaces  in  position?  Perhaps  they 
didn't  need  furnaces  in  heaven;  it  was  the  other 
place  where  the  furnaces  were.  Then  I  dozed. 
In  our  church  Sunday  School  began  at  noon, 
immediately  following  the  church  service,  in  a 
large  room  at  the  rear,  known  as  the  vestry.  The 
first  small  boy  on  his  way  to  school  stamped  by 
on  the  walk  outside,  with  what  sounded  like 
defiant  aggressiveness.  I  roused  from  my  doze  in 
time  to  see  the  old  man  in  front  of  me  wake  up 
with  a  start  at  the  sound  and  reach  quickly  for 
his  hymn  book,  as  if  he  supposed  the  sermon 
were  over.  Then  the  stamping  of  other  children 
was  heard  on  the  walk.  The  scholars  passed  in 
groups,  talking  shrilly.  I  knew  it  must  be  nearly 
twelve  o'clock.  In  the  congregation  there  was 
a  rustle  of  gathering  restlessness;  women  put  on 
their  gloves,  tried  to  glance  back  at  the  clock 
without  seeming  to  do  so,  stirred  in  their  seats. 
The  last  vestige  of  sleep  mysteriously  yielded  to 
this  influence  and  left  me.  At  last  the  minister 
came  to  the  conclusion  of  his  discourse,  and  in 
stantly  there  was  a  sound  all  over  the  church  as 
of  waters  released  and  hurrying  over  dead  leaves. 
It  was  the  congregation  shifting  their  positions, 
expelling  their  breaths,  and  turning  the  pages  of 
their  hymn  books.  I  listened  curiously  for  the 


250  ^Peppermints 

next  sound.  It  was  the  clearing  of  a  hundred 
throats,  getting  ready  to  sing.  I  too  arose  and  in 
my  tuneless  treble  made  a  joyful  noise  unto  the 
Lord.  Then  church  was  over. 

And  my  peppermints  are  all  eaten,  too,  and 
the  gossamer  web  of  memory  dissolves,  the  pic 
ture  fades,  and  I  see  before  me  this  room  of  mine, 
littered  with  some  learned  literature  but  more 
pipes  and  prints  and  miscellaneous  rubbish,  and 
I  hear  outside  in  the  Square,  not  the  spring  wind 
racing  among  the  budding  branches,  but  the 
coughing  of  a  consumptive  motor  car,  the  pene 
trating  squeak  of  a  trolley  rounding  a  curve  on 
a  dry  track,  the  irritating  jolt  of  heavy  drays, 
and  a  great,  subdued,  never-ceasing  rumble  and 
roar,  the  key-note  of  the  giant  city.  Only  the 
little  bag  remains.  Shall  I  blow  it  up  and  "bust" 
it?  That  act,  with  a  final  pop,  will  bring  back 
a  flash  of  my  childhood.  Here  goes  .... 

It  didn't  pop  nicely  at  all.  It  exploded  in  a 
kind  of  a  spudgy  collapse,  with  very  little  noise. 
Ah,  well,  you  cannot  eat  your  peppermints  and 
have  them  too — nor  the  bag!  But  it  has  been 
very  pleasant  to  eat  them,  to  wake  up  with  a 
whiff  and  a  nibble  the  memory  of  those  van 
ished  days,  those  voices  and  peaceful  paths  of 
life  very  far  from  here  and  now.  It  may  be  true 
that  we  mount  on  our  dead  selves  to  higher  things, 
but  it  is  well  to  hold  little  Memorial  Days  now 
and  then,  and  on  the  graves  of  our  dead,  espe- 


'Peppermints  251 

cially  of  those  who  died  young  in  the  flower  of 
innocence,  to  leave  a.  peppermint,  as  the  soldiers 
leave  on  the  grave  of  Miss  Emily  a  print  flag 
and  a  basket  of  geraniums.  A  cemetery  need 
not  be  a  mournful  place.  Maids  were  wooed 
and  won  in  our  cemetery,  and  the  high  school 
pupils  ate  their  lunches  out  of  collapsable  tin 
boxes  every  noon  on  the  tomb  of  Major  Barton, 
he  of  Revolutionary  fame,  who  horse-whipped 
the  British  captive  when  he  refused  to  eat  beans. 
Noble  New  Englander!  And  perhaps  my  own 
peppermint  feasts  are  not  so  much  memorial 
banquet,  after  all,  as  ceremonial  rites  in  honor 
of  my  native  land.  For  I  cannot  think  of  this 
great  city  of  New  York  as  my  home,  I  cannot 
fit  into  the  rushing,  roaring  cogs  and  grooves  of 
its  machinery  without  a  protest,  without  a  hope 
that  some  day  I  may  hear  the  wheels  no  longer 
roar  at  their  cruel  revolutions.  Thus  my  pep 
permints  speak  to  me  of  home,  of  quiet,  of 
certain  green  places  and  a  lilac  hedge;  there  is 
about  them  the  taste  and  odor  of  the  ideal.  They 
are  for  the  future  as  well  as  for  the  past.  Per 
haps  in  some  subtle  way  they  do  after  all  have 
potency  for  beauty.  I  fancy  that  some  day  I  too 
shall  stow  away  bags  of  them  amid  my  worthless 
precious  junk,  and  when  prying  hands  disturb  the 
dust  the  nostrils  of  a  youngster  now  unborn  will 
be  greeted  by  a  frail  yet  pungent  aroma.  I  can 
only  trust  that  he  will  know  well  what  it  is. 


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